


1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

by Ryah_Ignis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, US Politics - Freeform, and not terrible, but like...Hollywood style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryah_Ignis/pseuds/Ryah_Ignis
Summary: When Castiel Novak’s sister, Kelly Kline, dies in a plane accident with her husband, getting custody of his nephew Jack should be relatively easy.There’s just one problem.  Her husband was the president of the United States.  Instead of returning to his quiet life with a twelve-year-old in tow, Cas has to navigate the complications of DC life–from his brother Michael’s attempts to adopt Jack and use him as a pawn in his bid for senator-ship, to the Metro.And of course, who could forget Jack’s head of security, Dean Winchester?Featuring Destiel, Saileen, and Jack as the sweetest twelve-year-old on the planet.





	1. Air Force Down

_Bzzz.  Bzzzzzz.  Bzzzzzzzzz._

Castiel groaned as he flopped over on to his stomach.   The crick in his neck—no matter how much yoga he did he couldn’t ever seem to wake up without it—complained loudly as he fumbled for his phone in the semidarkness.  He managed to knock over the glass of water on his bedside table and the top three books on his stack before he reached it.

The background of his phone—one of his plants in particularly good lighting in the lab that day—was completely obscured.  Castiel squinted down at the too-bright light, preparing to send Meg a flurry of angry texts, but the little notifications weren’t from text messages.  Castiel snatched his reading glasses up and shoved them on his nose.  The blurry text cleared.

 **The Washington Post:** Air Force One Encounters Engine Trouble.

 **New York Times:** Air Force One in Trouble Over Pacific.

And so on, a dozen little notifications with more popping up every time he scrolled down.  With every single little buzz of his phone, tension’s tight fingers clamped harder on Castiel’s heart until it felt like it had in high school what felt like a million years ago, like it was going to beat out of his chest.

Finally, a text.

 **Meg:** Clarence, don’t turn on the TV.

Numbly, Castiel watched notifications come one after the other as every major news network in the world realized the same thing.

Air Force One had crashed with the President on board.

* * *

 

Castiel’s alarm went off at the same time that his doorbell rang.  It took four insistent beeps for him to tear his gaze away from his ceiling fan, where he’d been focused for the last half hour or so.  He smacked the alarm clock so hard that the button left little indents in his palm.  Before he could even get downstairs, the doorbell rang twice more.

“Meg, I—”

On the doorstep, hair pulled back in an artfully tousled bun and dressed in scrubs with an unidentifiable stain on the left wrist, stood Meg.  She didn’t let him finish.

“You’re clammy,” she informed him, taking both of his hands in hers.

“You got a manicure,” he said.

Meg’s hands clasped his even tighter, the tips of the blood red acrylics digging into his skin.  Castiel didn’t even register the pain.

“Let’s get you something to eat.”

Meg probably knew the contents of his kitchen better than he did—her apartment’s appliances weren’t quite as modern so she used his, and he would much rather order takeout—so Castiel sat down at the small wooden table and watched as she rummaged around.  He tried not to notice the judgmental stare when she found a half-open carton of rice strewn in the fridge.

“You told me not to turn on the TV.  Why?”

Meg didn’t look at him. “They have footage, Castiel.  And they keep running it.”

He nodded at least six times before he realized that he was still slowly nodding.  Meg didn’t so much as glance in his direction until she finished with his toast and a mug of tea.

“You’re not eating anything?”

Meg shook her head. “I was on shift when everyone’s phones started going off.  I ate before then.”

She set the plate down in front of him.  Castiel didn’t really know what to do with this new side of her; most of their conversations consisted of insults traded back and forth.  Instead, he bit off a small corner of toast and started chewing.

“I want to see it.”

Meg sucked in a breath.  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.  Finish your toast and we’ll talk.”

Castiel knew better than to argue with her.  Meg would force feed him if she felt it was necessary, and in his current state, he probably wouldn’t be able to fight it.  He nibbled on another piece of toast.  It tasted like dust.

“Did you leave work early?”

Meg never willingly stayed in her scrubs longer than strictly necessary, so she had to have driven straight over.

“I told the head nurse to screw himself.”

Castiel choked on a sip of his tea, half from surprise and half from the extremely hot water.  Some of it slopped on to the table and his pajama pant.

“What?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“It’s okay,” Meg said dismissively, waving her hand.  “He thinks I’m hot so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Castiel couldn’t come up with a response for that.  Instead, he turned his gaze to his mug and didn’t say a word until he’d made a valiant effort with his toast.

“I want to see it, Meg.”

She dusted her hands off on the front of her shirt. “Where’s your laptop?”

Castiel retrieved it from under a stack of his latest data and forked it over at the dangerous look in her eyes.

“Are you sure?”

Suddenly, looking at her face, he wasn’t quite as sure, but he didn’t want to back down yet.

“Yeah.”

Meg logged in—Castiel didn’t want to know why she knew his password—and tapped in to Google.  No cute doodle today.  Castiel’s hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Let me know if it’s too much, all right?”

Meg swiveled the computer around.  Castiel wanted to close his eyes almost the moment the footage appeared on screen.  He’d seen that plane a thousand times, of course.  Never in person, but you couldn’t avoid it on the news, in history textbooks.

In his sister’s emails.

“And here we’ve got Air Force One.  We’ve just received word from our White House correspondent that they’re experiencing engine trouble.  Word is that everything is going to be just fine.  Sometimes warning lights go on with no cause—oh my God.”

And on the anchor’s words, the plane tilted violently forward.  Catiel reached forward, as if he could stop it with his bare hands through the screen.  Instead, he got to watch the plane nosedive right into the Pacific.  Upon impact, it exploded into flames.

Castile shoved the computer away.  Then, pushing Meg out of his way, he raced to the bathroom.  He barely made it to the basin before he was vomiting, bile rising up in his throat.  He banged his forehead off of the toilet bowl.  Beneath him, his knees shook.

“Deep breaths.”

He hadn’t noticed Meg come in the door, but her hand came up to cup the base of his skull.  He leaned gratefully into the support as he collapsed on to the cool tile beneath him.  Meg steadied him so he wouldn’t fall over.

“Kelly?” he croaked.

Meg took a wad of toilet paper and handed it to him to wipe his face.  It wasn’t until he saw the paper fluttering in his hand that he realized he was shaking.

“She decided to take the Pacific trip at the last minute.  I’m so sorry.”

* * *

“We need to be on air in the next thirty seconds or all the West Coast is going to see is a blank screen!” Ruby snapped at her cameraman as she straightened out her blouse.

She hated being out of DC.  Where were they again?

“How do I say his name?”

Her assistant shuffled through her papers.  Ruby was about two seconds away from demanding a new assistant before she surfaced with the paper she needed.

“Cah-stee-ell,” she read with a puzzled look on her face. “And No-Vak.  Like it’s spelled.”

Ruby’s face scrunched up. “He couldn’t have been called Jimmy?”

The assistant shrugged hopelessly. 

Ruby calmed herself down by thinking about the bubble bath waiting for her back in her apartment in DC.  After today, she would never have to look at this tiny rickety house with its three trellises and dozen or so rose bushes ever again.

Finally, the cameraman gave her a wave.

“Thank you, Bob.  As he said, I’m currently standing outside of Castiel Novak’s house.  He’s the older brother of First Lady Kelly Kline.  We’re still trying to figure out why she was on Air Force One this morning.”

At the sound of the door opening behind them, Ruby turned.  For a moment, she panicked, thinking that her idiot assistant hadn’t realized that Castiel Novak was Kelly’s sister, not her brother.  Then, at the look on the woman’s face, she panicked for an entirely different reason.  After so many interviews and reports, she knew better than to mess with someone in scrubs.

“What the hell?”

Ruby recovered her composure just a half beat later than usual. “Ma’am, my name is Ruby—”

“Do I look like I care?”

The woman’s eyes flicked over to the camera.  Ruby felt like she had about forty-five seconds before the woman started whaling on it.  She made a little _cut_ motion at her cameraman, but he stared slack-jawed at the drama unfolding in front of him.

She so needed a raise.

“Get that out of his front yard _now._ You think he wants to talk about this?”

Ruby opened her mouth, but the woman clearly wasn’t having it.

“No.  You know what?  Just get out before I make you.”

The woman turned to the rest of the crew and began to flip them off one by one.  Ruby motioned to cut the cameras again.  This time, her cameraman fumbled to follow her instructions.

“Knew that would work,” said the woman with a smirk in Ruby’s direction. “Censors, you know?  Anyway, get the hell out of here.”

Ruby glared at her, but the woman just gave her a little wave and vanished back into the house.

* * *

Meg found him sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his fireplace—cold, even though he loved more than anything to have it going—with a photo album on his lap.  She sank into place beside him, not saying a word.  There was no surer way to get him talking.

“She made me this.  Kelly.  She knew I didn’t have anything like it.”

He turned the page, face crumpling even further at the picture.  It was Kelly, her husband, and a young boy that Meg had only seen in the Christmas cards Cas kept on his mantle.  Meg put an arm around his shoulder.

“Their son,” she whispered, horrified.

She’d forgotten.  What was his name again?

“Jack,” Castiel said.  “He lost his parents.  Both of them.”

He closed the photo album violently.  For her part, Meg was glad he hadn’t snapped it shut on his fingers.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Castiel lingered on the photo album for a long moment. “I need to go.”

He knocked the book off his lap as he scrambled to his feet.

“Go?” Meg repeated dubiously. “Go where?”

But Castiel dashed past her towards the staircase without answering.  Resolving to never befriend the weird dude on the first day of class ever again.  Meg ran after him.  She nearly tripped on the slightly upturned carpet near the door.

“I don’t want you driving like this.’

He dodged into the spare room and yanked his suitcase out of the closet.  A spray of old clothing that he hadn’t wanted to get rid of rained down on him.  Meg helped him dig out the suitcase from the avalanche.

“How far is the drive to DC?” Castiel demanded.

Meg did some math in her head. “Like seven hours?  Or something like that?”

Without a thank you, Castiel vanished into his room.  Meg kicked a stray textbook out of the way as she followed him.  He’d never thrown away anything in his life.

“You can’t just run off,” Meg said. “What about work?”

If there was anything that would appeal to Castiel in this state, it was logic like that.  But he didn’t budge.

“You’re not working any all nighters this week, are you?”

Meg could see where this was going. “Castiel—”

“You know how to water them, right?  And you can fill in my spreadsheet.  You apparently know the password to my computer.  You’ll be fine.”

“Fine?” Meg spluttered frantically as Castiel began stuffing clothes seemingly at random from the floor of his room. “I don’t know anything about biology.”

Castiel gave her a disparaging look. “Anyone can look after a plant.  And besides, how did you get a nursing degree without bio?”

Meg had one more card to play as he zipped up his now-bulging suitcase.

“There’s tons of people in DC.  Tons of people who want to talk to you.”

For a moment, panic flared on his face.  Meg was a split second away from declaring victory when he shoved it down.

“I defended my thesis,” he said, half to himself. “I can talk to a couple of nosy reporters.”

Meg tried her hardest not to look doubtful as he shoved notebooks and one of his textbooks into a backpack.  When he caught her looking, he got defensive. 

“I might be down there a while!”

Finally finished, he slung the backpack over his shoulder and pulled the handle of the suitcase up to hip height.  Meg kept a watchful eye on him as he dragged it down the stairs.  It wouldn’t do for two Novaks to die in one day, thank you very much.  At least not on Meg Masters’s watch.

“You’ll look after the plants?” he asked, as he fished for his keys in that stupid, oversize trench coat of his.

“Fine,” Meg groused.  Then, softer. “Look after yourself, yeah Clarence?”

Castiel’s face grew stony. “Yeah.  I will.”

 

 


	2. The West Wing

“You look like you need about five shots of espresso,” Eileen said as they ducked into the briefing room.

She was one to talk. Sam raised his eyebrows at the buttons on her dress shirt—buttoned in the wrong order—and the coffee stain on the cuff of her sleeve.  Still, he tried to smooth out his hair a little.  It was probably sticking out in a hundred directions.

Sam rolled his eyes. “You haven’t gone home since the news broke either, have you?”

She delicately smoothed out a pantsuit that had clearly been slept in, not deigning to answer.

“You know, I have a perfectly respectable cot in my office.  And it’s only a few blocks away.”

Eileen rolled her eyes. “The day I sleep in your office is the day I die, Winchester.”

Sam couldn’t help the smirk. “My bed, on the other hand…”

She whacked him with her notebook. “That was one time.”

He raised his eyebrows again, as if to say “Once?” but before she could hit him again, the entire room went dead silent.  As in, completely.  Which, for a room full of reporters, was completely uncharacteristic.  National emergences, it seemed, did that to you.

Charlie Bradbury walked up to the podium, hair pulled back in a messy bun.  Sam had never seen her so disheveled, even after that all-nighter a year and a half ago with the tax bill.  Her eyes were a little red.  Sam remembered with a jolt that she’d been pretty close with the First Lady.

She scrubbed a hand over her face. “Good morning, everyone.”

Scattered good mornings all around.  No one seemed willing to break the oppressive silence.  Beside them, hidden from anyone else, Eileen signed, “She looks like death.”

Sam nodded.  She looked like she needed a nap and a shower, at the very least.  He tugged at his collar, making a face and wondering if he looked the same.  It seemed stifling in the room.

“I’ll be taking questions.”

The room burst into a flurry of activity, as if they had been waiting for permission.  A hand went up first in the front of the room.  Charlie pointed.

“How has the vice president been taking the news?”

Charlie grimaced—at least, Sam thought it was a grimace.  She was remarkably good at concealing her emotions when at the podium.  Still, she didn’t exactly keep her distaste for Roman secret among friends.

“He obviously is very saddened.  President Kline was a dear friend in addition to a wonderful leader and colleague.  But he’s also eager to show that we as a country will band together and emerge from this tragedy stronger than ever.”

Eileen leaned close, fingers moving quickly in her lap. “I almost didn’t vote for Kline because Roman was on the ballot.”

Sam shrugged and signed back. “It was necessary.”

He remembered his brother ranting about it over Thanksgiving, Uncle Bobby rolling his eyes in the background.  Weirdly enough, Dean had always been the more political one of the two of them—Sam enjoyed sitting back and analyzing, not involving himself.  It was part of what made him a good journalist.

Eileen raised her hand. “Are we going to be doing some sort of memorial?  For the reporters who were on the plane?”

Luckily for the press, there’d only been a few.  With a filibuster going on in the Senate over a health care change, most of the outlets hadn’t been fast enough to get someone on Air Force One on short notice.

“Yes,” Charlie said with a tired nod. “Of course we will.”

She wrapped up the briefing.  To everyone’s credit, they didn’t press her further.  It was the strangest day Sam had ever spent in the White House, and that was really saying something.

“I’m going to talk to Charlie,” Sam told Eileen, patting her shoulder.  Then, “And, uh, I was thinking.  If you want to get drinks after work or something—”

If these past twelve hours had taught him anything, it was that life was sometimes far, far shorter than you thought it would be.

“I’d like that.” Eileen smirked at hm. “But if you think I’m throwing your any leads, you’re dead wrong.”

Sam pushed his way expertly through the throng of reporters.  It helped that he could see over most of their heads.  Charlie spotted him coming and slowed her exit. 

“I don’t have much time.”

“I’m so sorry, Charlie.”

She let out a little sniff. “Thanks.  No one’s said that yet.”

He couldn’t do much because of the crowd—Charlie would kill him if someone accused her of having favorites—so he looped his arm around her shoulders for a quick squeeze before withdrawing.

“On the record, how’s Jack holding up?”

Charlie sighed. “His parents are dead and he’s twelve years old and the whole country is watching him.  Hell, the world.  It’s a lot.”

Sam bit his lip. “And off the record?”

Charlie didn’t quite look at him.

“Dean told me he cried all of last night.”

Sam gave her arm another pat before he headed back into the briefing room.

* * *

After a very long argument with a security guard named Benny and no less than three patdowns and four security checks, Castiel found himself in a small room in the west wing.  He supposed he should have been a little more awed to be in the White House, but it felt like his anxiety was actually going to claw up his throat instead.  Benny dumped him in the room and headed out, presumably to find someone who could verify his identity.  Castiel wished him luck.  His mother and father had been dead a decade, and there was no way his older brother would—

“Michael?”

The door opened again, revealing Benny the security guard, this time leading a man several years and several inches Castiel’s senior.

“Little brother,” Michael said, extending his hand for Castiel to take.

He wanted to take Michael by the shoulders and shake him, asking him why he’d go for a handshake when their sister was dead.  Instead, he took the proffered hand.  He took in his brother’s face for the first time in something like five years—if you didn’t count the _Wall Street Journal_ cover he’d graced a few months back. 

“What are you doing here?”

Of course, the only times he saw Michael was weddings and funerals, so it probably shouldn’t have surprised him so much to see him after their sister’s death.  Michael looked virtually unchanged since that last meeting, aside from the slightly deeper frown lines etched into his handsome face.  He’d clearly been dyeing his dark hair; Castiel reached up unconsciously to flatten down the greying patch of his own.

“The same thing you are, I expect.”

He reached down to flick an imaginary speck of dust off of his suit.  It fit him perfectly, and it didn’t have a single wrinkle in it.  Castiel looked down at his jeans with a grimace.  At least Meg had made him change out of his pajamas?

“Do you know anything about the funeral?”

Before Michael could answer, the door opened yet again.  Castiel was expecting Benny, so the guy who walked in next shocked him on two levels.  One, he _definitely_ wasn’t Benny.  Two, he was quite possibly the most attractive man Castiel had ever seen in his life.

“Agent Dean Winchester.”

No preamble.  Castiel could admire that in a person.

“I’m the head of Jack’s secret service detail.”

“I’m—”

“Michael Novak,” Agent Winchester said with a curt nod. “And Castiel.”

It wasn’t surprising that he’d been able to recognize Michael on sight—he was probably impossible to ignore, even in DC—but Castiel didn’t think anyone except his mailman had ever recognized him in an unfamiliar location.

“Kelly—that is, Mrs. Kline—had extensive files prepared for both of you, in the event you decided to visit.”

Cas’s chest ached suddenly with regret.  Of course Kelly had always kept the door open.  But he’d never liked politics, never liked the hustle and bustle of DC, never liked the way Kelly seemed to dissolve into her role as First Lady without a speck of Kelly Novak left.

“What’s going to happen to him?” Castiel asked.

Agent Winchester’s lips thinned into a line. “Mrs. Kline’s will wasn’t helpful.  She entrusted Jack to his godfather.”

Castiel glanced sideways at Michael.  Rather than choosing a godmother, she’d appointed both of her brothers Jack’s godfather.  Not that either of them had been doing much in the way of living up to the title.  He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Jack.

“I’ll take him,” Michael said in the same voice he’d always used when they were teenagers, like whatever he said ended the argument, no questions asked. “It’s no burden.   I’m sure your file can tell you I’m more than financially able to take a child on.”

Castiel probably should have felt a burst of relief, knowing that he wouldn’t be responsible for Jack, but it didn’t come.  Instead, bile rose in his throat.  Remembering kneeling by the toilet what felt like a lifetime ago, he forced it back down.

Dena’s voice turned to ice. “With all due respect, Mr. Novak, I don’t give a—I don’t care about your money.  It’s Jack’s wellbeing that matters here.”

“How is he?” Castiel asked, suddenly reminded that Jack had lost both of his parents literally less than twenty-four hours ago.

“He’s about as good as you could expect,” Agent Winchester said shortly.

“We’ll see him now,” Michael said.

It wasn’t even an order, really.  Just a statement of fact.  Exactly the sort of thing that had driven Castiel completely crazy when they’d lived under the same roof.

Agent Winchester’s mouth twisted on the next words. “I’ll go get him.”

He looked as if it were the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but he ducked out of the room without complaint.  Michael examined his fingernails.

“How’s that lovely friend of yours?  Meg?”

Castiel glared.  They’d been at a wedding of some distant cousin and Meg had come as his date.  Michael had spent the evening trying to chat her up.  Castiel had a nagging suspicion that, had he not been there, she would have been more than willing to leave the party with him.  (“Maybe I just have a thing for Novaks, Clarence.”)

“She’s a nurse now.”

Considering Castiel had been expecting a crude response, his next words, while irritating, weren’t nearly as bad as they could have been.

“Are you still living in that apartment?”

The implied ‘hardly a place for Jack’ dripped off the end.  Castiel had learned as a child to not rise to Michael’s bait when he got like that.

“No.  I bought a house about three years ago.  I have a spare room.”

Michael looked as if he were about to say something along the lines of _how cute,_ so Castiel turned away, rolling his eyes.  Unfortunately, the room didn’t give him very far to go.  He’d sort of expected the White House to be bigger in person, but he supposed whoever had built it had never considered that it would have to house this many people.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to endure Michael’s company alone for very long.  Agent Winchester reentered the room, hand clapped protectively on Jack’s shoulder.  Castiel suddenly understood why older relatives had always commented on his height growing up.  It really was remarkable how quickly people grew.

Jack regarded them with that twelve-year-old suspicion that was somehow far worse than that of an adult.  It took everything Castiel had not to squirm under his gaze.  Beside him, Michael was made of marble.  Of course.

“Hi,” Jack said.

Castiel gave him a little wave; he could have sworn that the corner of Jack’s mouth twitched.  Was that a good sign?

“Hello, Jack,” Michael said smoothly, smiling warmly at him.

Good God.  How did he manage to turn it on like that?  Castiel knew for a fact that Michael was every bit as terrible at managing his emotions as he was.  The only difference between them was that Michael was able to fake it ‘til he made it.

Jack leaned back into Agent Winchester’s hand, as if trying to make himself seem smaller.

“How are things at school?” Michael asked.

“Going pretty well,” Jack said. “But then my parents died.  So, you know, it’s probably not going to stay that way.”

With that, he turned on his heel and pushed his way past Agent Winchester out the door.  He let Jack get a few paces in front of him before he turned to the brothers.

“Okay.  How about we regroup tomorrow?  We can discuss the details then.  I think Jack needs a little time to process.”

Michael smiled that same, overly warm smile. “Of course.  We’ll see you then.”

Agent Winchester’s mouth didn’t so much as twitch. “Great.  I’ll have Benny come get you.”

 


	3. The Residence

Michael invited him to dinner.

Castiel’s years in med school had taught him to never pass down a free meal—Michael would certainly insist on paying as some sort of weird power move—so he accepted, as much as he didn’t want to sit across the table from a man he hadn’t spoken to properly in more than a decade and pretend that they were brothers.

He spent the few hours before dinner pacing around his hotel room, trying to get his thoughts in order.  He didn’t necessarily want the responsibility of raising a kid.  God knew didn’t manage to feed himself half the time, much less someone else.  Much less his sister’s son.  But at the same time, he knew Michael had to have an angle.

He never did anything without one.

He hadn’t brought any suit jackets.  He should have known that Michael would show up and turn literally everything into a formal situation, but he hadn’t prepared for it.  Instead, he toyed with the few ties he’d brought and eventually decided to go without.  He’d get the added bonus of the horror on Michael’s face at what he was wearing.

“You’re looking…sharp,” Michael said when Castiel walked into the restaurant.

Castiel normally ate at places with the kind of flickery fluorescent light that cast an odd blue-green glow over your food.  The warm golden candlelight seemed entirely too mellow for him.  Still.  He wasn’t about to force Michael to eat at a restaurant below his standards.

Castiel didn’t bother with the small talk as he slid into his seat.  Velvet cushions.  Really?

“What is your endgame here?”

Michael spread his napkin out over his lap and smoothed it flat, no wrinkles. 

“Castiel, please.  What exactly do you think I am?”

Answering what he actually thought Michael was probably wouldn’t go over well.  Instead, Castiel laid his napkin out as well.  The bit over his left knee refused to lay flat.  Typical.  He squashed it down.

“I think you have an angle.  I just want to know what it is.”

Michael laced his fingers together and leaned forward, his elbows resting against the table.  Castiel resisted the urge to mimic their mother and tell him to move them.  The dim light of the candle illuminated his chin, and a whisper of white stubble clinging there.  Maybe Kelly’s death had impacted him more than he let on.

“Come on.  You and I both know that there’s no way you could ever raise a child, much less a child in the limelight like Jack is sure to be. You don’t even leave your house, your only friend is a hot nurse you met in medical school while working for a degree for a job you never took, and you spend all of your time studying a handful of plants!”

Castiel’s hand clenched around the napkin, crumpling it so hard that it refused to return to its normal state even after he released it.

“And you’d be a better father?”

Michael shrugged. “I could give him the life he’s used to.  That’s more than you can say.”

The anger radiating from his chest seemed to warm even the tips of his ears.  Castiel would bet money that, if they were anywhere except a barely-lit restaurant, his brother could see them turning red.

“Why are you here?”

“If you must know, I was planning to run for Senator next cycle.”

Castiel stared.  Of course.  Michael had never done anything just for the good of someone else, even when they were kids.  Why should this be any different?

“Listen,” Michael continued, as if he didn’t even notice the disbelief written on Castiel’s face. “You and I are both using Jack, and you know it.  I want a seat in Washington.  You want to ease the guilt of letting your baby sister get tangled up with a sleazy politici—”

Castiel surged out of his seat.  It clattered to the floor.  Behind him, an older couple turned to stare.  A drip of hot wax from the spluttering candle dropped on to the tablecloth barely an inch from Michael.

“Don’t you talk about her like that.”

He turned on his heel and stormed out of the restaurant.  He’d get custody of Jack if it killed him.

* * *

“Hey, Jack,” Dean called softly. “Do you mind if I come in?”

The door creaked open.  On the other side, Jack looked up at him, eyes still red-rimmed.  He stepped back to allow Dean inside.  Dean swallowed hard against the lump formed at the memory of a fourteen-year-old Sam with all of the knuckles on his left hand bruised and bleeding, voice raw as he shouted at Dean to go away.  Jack’s grief seemed quieter than his little brother’s had been, but then, Sam had never gone quietly in his life.

“Hi.”

Jack sat down on the end of his bed, still sniffing.  Dean plucked a tissue out of his pocket and handed it over.  Jack blew his nose loudly, crumpled the tissue in his fist, and chucked it over his shoulder.

“I’m not here to talk or anything.  I’m just here if you need something.”

He still remembered that day five years ago when he’d first met candidate Kline’s family.  Kelly and her easy smile, and little Jack and his stuffed tiger.  Roars sat perched on a nearby pillow, observing the proceedings.  Dean grabbed him before he sat down and set him in front of Jack.  As if he’d been waiting for the permission, Jack tugged the stuffed animal into his arms.

“I don’t like being here alone,” Jack says, unintentionally hugging Roars a little closer. “It’s so quiet.”

Dean nodded. “I can set up a cot outside if you’d like.”

“No.”

Dean held up his hands. “It’s all right.  It was just a sug—”

“I want the cot in here.”

It didn’t take Dean long to get in contact with housekeeping.  While they waited for the cot’s arrival, Dean loosened his tie and sat down next to Jack on the bed.

“You remember Sam, right?”

Jack nodded. “He’s super tall.”

The big brother side of Dean wanted to argue that Sam wasn’t _that_ tall, really, but he held his tongue.

“Yeah, him.  He was fourteen when Mom died.  He was crushed.  But he was—is—a strong kid.  He got through it.  And I know things are hard right now, but—”

Jack flinched slightly.

“Are they going to kill _me_?”

Dean reached over and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I won’t let them.  I swear.”

Jack’s shoulders drained of tension.  Dean stood, ruffling his hair like he used to do with Sammy.

“Go get ready for bed.  The cot will get here soon.”

Jack padded off towards the adjoining bathroom, pajamas in hand.  Dean rubbed at his temples as soon as he was out of sight.  He didn’t share Jack’s childlike faith in—well—himself.  He trusted Benny and the rest of the guys, but he trusted them with _his_ life, not Jack’s.  Not now.

If they could kill the president—Dean didn’t let himself wander down that particular path of thought.  It wouldn’t help anyone, much less Jack, if he allowed it to paralyze him.

“You’re killing my back, Dean,” Benny said as he edged into the room with the cot trailing along behind him. 

Dean grinned at him, smile not quite reaching his eyes.

“Hey, I’m helping you get your reps in,” he teased back.

They set up the cot together.  The fitted sheet refused to stay until Dean belly flopped on top of it to straighten it out.

“It’s a good thing they don’t have you assigned to housekeeping,” Benny said.

Dean rolled his eyes. “I’m a perfectly good housekeeper, thank you very much.”

After all, he’d managed to keep Sammy alive, healthy, and safe for four years with limited complaints. 

Finally, Benny finished fluffing the pillow, gave Dean a mock salute, and headed for the door, just as Jack emerged from the bathroom.

The tips of his ears burned when he caught sight of Benny. “I’m not scared.”

“Of course not,” Benny replied. “Dean here just wants to keep an eye on you.  I understand.”

With that, he ducked out of the room again.  Dean lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the cot.  It creaked worryingly beneath him.  Dean’s back gave a premature twinge at the thought of spending the night there.

“Goodnight.”

Jack leaned over and flicked off the light.  Dean slouched back against the pillow.  In his pocket, his phone buzzed.

 **Sam:** Are you planning on heading back soon?

He frowned down at the message, the pieces falling into place.

 **Dean:** no. u got company?

 **Sam:** Shut up, jerk.

 **Dean:** night, bitch

He put the phone into power saving mode in case someone needed to get ahold of him in the night and closed his eyes.

His thoughts drifted to the Novak brothers.  Neither seemed much like Kelly, but then, from the little she’d ever said about her parents when he was around had always suggested the family was weird.

At least they were both good looking?

Neither of them, despite their good looks, seemed like the right person to raise Jack.  If Dean had his way, he’d be the one to do it.  He’d done it once with Sammy, he could do it again.  But he knew that the newspapers (well, the ones that weren’t partially written by Sam and Eileen, anyway) would absolutely eat it up.

He tried to imagine what Sam would say if he knew he was considering just adopting Jack himself.

* * *

“I think Dean is about two seconds away from adopting Jack himself.”

Sam held the door open to his and Dean’s apartment open as Eileen ducked under his arm into the room.  She stood rather awkwardly in the doorway for a moment like she wasn’t sure she had permission to be there.

“Wine?” Sam asked.

Eileen raised her eyebrows. “You have wine?”

In answer, he led the way into the kitchen.  Despite the fact that neither of them had the time for a sit-down meal very often, Dean kept the kitchen pretty well-stocked.  He didn’t drink very often, though, so there wasn’t a whole lot of wine to choose from.

“I’ve got a really cheap bottle of red that a coworker got me for my birthday and a half empty Pinot Grigio Dean was using for this chicken dish he wanted to try.”

“The pinot sounds fine.”

He tugged the bottle out of the fridge and pointed the way over to the tiny living room.  Dean had shoved a couch almost as big as the room itself in there a few years back, so it dominated most of the space.  Sam wasn’t quite sure how they would get it out when they finally moved.

“He doesn’t strike me as the maternal type.”

Sam opened the cabinet with all of the cups.  Did they not have wine glasses?  He ended up pouring them into two red solo cups.  He handed her one as he sat down next to her on the couch.

“He’s a total mother hen.  Kind of had to be.  Dad died when we were kids, and Mom was a cop, so Dean kept my nose clean.”

It really wasn’t a wonder that Dean had dedicated his adult life to protecting someone else.  Before, Sam hadn’t spent too much time worrying about what lengths Dean would go to in order to keep Jack safe.  These days, it was pretty much all he could think about.

“It’s sweet that you live together.”

Sam shrugged. “DC rent is expensive.  Plus neither of us are here very often.”

She took a sip out of her cup, not complaining about the decidedly unromantic air of the evening so far.  Then again, neither of them were much the romancing type.  So it probably didn’t bother her at all.

“I didn’t know that about your mom,” she said after a long moment.

“She died when I was fourteen.  Armed robbery in a convenience store of all places.  She wasn’t even on duty—just out buying a soda when she stepped in to the conflict.  Dean was already eighteen by then, so he got custody.”

Eileen glanced sideways at him. “You don’t tell a lot of people about this, do you?”

With the hand not holding his plastic cup, Sam started absently playing with the remote control.

He shrugged. “Everybody’s got a sob story.”

His situation hadn’t even been as bad as it could have been.  Another year earlier and he and Dean could have been separated in the foster system.  Mom had had enough life insurance for Dean to budget until he could get a proper job.

“Still.” She leaned over to squeeze his hand. “I’m glad you told me.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.  Sam stole glances of her out of the corner of his eye where he could  They’d known each other for almost five years now, but they’d never done _this._ Why tonight?

“The _Times_ wants me to go home.”

Almost like she’d read his mind.  Sometimes, Sam swore she could.

“Really?” He tried to keep his voice steady, disinterested. “I didn’t think they’d want to lose one of their best correspondents in the field.”

If he’d been talking to another one of his colleagues, it probably would have been nothing but lip service.  Not with Eileen.  She had a way of getting to the heart of an issue in a way that Sam still hadn’t managed to learn.

“That’s what they’re concerned about,” Eileen said, pulling a face. “We lost some good reporters on that plane.  I don’t think they want to lose anymore.  So we’re cutting back in DC for a while.”

Sam shook his head. “That’s why they need you here!  This could be the biggest moment of your career!”

Sure, doing short little blurbs about the goings on in the White House was good, but Sam wanted to write something denser, the kind of thought piece that could really launch his writing.

Eileen shrugged. “They want to get me training for an editor position in the next few years.”

“Oh.” Sam tried very hard not to sound like someone had punched him in the ribs. “Well.  Congrats.  You deserve it.”

She smiled, though it seemed a little forced.  Sam stamped down on the little ray of hope that popped up.

“I just wanted you to know,” Eileen said. “You—you’ve really made this job easier.” She knocked his shoulder with hers. “Who else would literally drag me home when I was waiting for the budget proposal to come through?”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh at the memory.  They’d spent more of the night flicking straw wrappers at each other in the mess than they had actually reporting on anything.

“Well,” Sam mustered again. “Congratulations.  And I’ll miss you.”

“Let’s just forget about it now, huh?  Enjoy the night.”

She clinked the rim of her solo cup with his.  Sam forced another smile.  His cheeks pinched at the stretch.

 

 


	4. The Roosevelt Room

In his hotel room the next morning, Castiel fussed over his clothing more than he had ever done for a college interview or a work presentation.  He changed his tie three times (really saying something, seeing as he’d only brought two) and even did his best to polish a set of dress shoes about a decade out of date.

Even if Dean saw right through Michael’s pretenses, it would be hard to justify handing the president’s son off to a man who forgot he had to eat lunch on a semi-regular basis instead of Michael—and Michael’s money.

So best impressions it was.  He sent Meg a picture of the finished product.  When she replied with a winky face instead of judging his outfit, he figured she still felt bad for him.

He’d spent a lot of last night trying to work through his feelings about Kelly.  As children, they’d been practically inseparable.  Kelly had followed him around like a moon.

But then, she’d always been in orbit.

He straightened his tie one last time in the foggy mirror before he braved the cold and the metro back to the White House.

He still couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact that Kelly and Jack had lived there.  Much like he had when Kline was alive, he didn’t spare a thought for him.

Benny ushered him into the imposing room again.  Despite the amount of tiny, cluttered offices that they’d passed on the way in, it seemed they still had space for intimidating historic things, too. 

“You’re early,” Agent Winchester said when he entered the room.

He could have said something productive.  Instead, one of his completely inane thoughts popped out of his mouth.

“What’s with this room?”­

“Roosevelt Room.  FDR called it the Fish Room, though.” At the amazed look on Castiel’s face, Agent Winchester laughed. “I double as a tour guide when we’re short staffed.  You pick that sort of stuff up around here.”

He gestured at the portrait of FDR on the wall.  Or at least, Castiel thought he was FDR, given the name of the room.  He hadn’t done fantastically in American History back in school.

To Castiel’s surprise, Dean handed over a cup of coffee as he offered him a seat.

“I wanted to speak to you before Michael got here.”

He’d decided last night about halfway through his staring contest with the ceiling that his best course of action would be to appeal directly to the agent.  Michael’s influence would get to higher powers eventually.  He had to break in early.

After a moment of silence, Agent Winchester arched an eyebrow. “You don’t get along with your siblings, do you?”

“Do you?”

A hint of a smile. “Pretty well, actually.  He needs to learn to stop leaving his laundry around the apartment, though.”

Castiel forced a smile. “Agent Winchester—”

He held up a hand. “Dean, please.  I can’t stand all the stuffiness.”

Why had he never run into a guy like this at any of those speed dating nights that Meg forced him on?  Castiel tried very hard to conceal the heat in his cheeks as he replied.

“Castiel, then.” He sighed. “I know I’m not the idea candidate, but you have to understand that I only have Jack’s best interests at heart.  I grew up with Michael.  He’s overbearing at best and controlling at worst,” Castiel said, trying to keep his eyes steadily turned on Agent Winchesters—on Dean’s—and as earnest as possible.

“He told me last night that he wants to make a bid for Senator back in New York.  He sees Jack as a means to an end, not a child who just lost everything.”

Dean scrubbed a hand over his face. “No offense, Cas, but how am I supposed to know that you don’t want to use him either?  I mean, both of you go years without seeing this kid, but the moment he’s vulnerable, you both come out of the woodwork?  It doesn’t sound right.”

Castiel was so thrown by the use of a nickname that he almost wasn’t able to pull himself together for a response.

“I didn’t like when Kelly started going out with Kline,” Castiel started. “I hated him.  I’m not really—not really that political.  So I just saw him as trouble.”

Dean smirked. “In this town, you don’t meet a lot of people like that.  Not political, I mean.”

Castiel took a sip of his coffee.  Weirdly, Dean had been able to get almost the perfect combination of sugar and creamer.  Usually he didn’t like coffee unless he begged enough for Meg to make it in the morning.  Which didn’t work very often.

“You don’t seem the type.”

Dean shook his head, laughing. “I work in the White House, dude.”

Oh.  Right.  Castiel had let himself drift off track.  Right now, Jack was the only thing that mattered.  Not the fact that it felt like he’d known Dean for years.  Not the fact that he was actually talking to another human being without feeling like his heart was literally going to crawl out of his chest. 

“You have to believe me about Jack,” he tried. “I swear.  I’m a botanist, okay?  No ambitions at all, unless you count plants.  And I don’t think he’s going to be able to help me with that.”

Dean tugged at his collar, as if it had just gotten several degrees hotter in the room.  His tongue flicked out to wet his lips.

“I’m not making the final decision here.  That’s above my pay grade.”

Castiel sighed. “Yes.  Well, thank you.”

* * *

“Scoot.”

Dean hauled one of his brother’s enormous legs off of the couch, leaving him enough room to collapse into, tie finally undone.  He hadn’t really been home since the crash except for a quick shower once Benny had begun to complain about the smell.

“I ordered pizza.”

“I knew there was a reason I let you live in my apartment.”

Sam shoved his shoulder in response, but Dean could tell his heart wasn’t in it.  Sure, it could be the crash—he’d known some of the reporters, hadn’t he?—but Dean had a feeling there was something else at play there. 

“Whatever.  How long until you get back?”

Dean lifted his wrist up to his face.  It took a few seconds for it to stop wobbling in his vision, and a few seconds more for him to realize that he wasn’t wearing his watch.  Okay.  So he needed a bit of sleep. 

“Ugh.  Like five hours, maybe.  Metro time included.”

Sam got up off the couch at the sound of the buzzer.  When he returned, it was with two beers in one hand and a pizza box balanced on the other.

“Jack will be okay without you for seven hours.  That gives you time for more than three hours of sleep.”

Dean shook his head. “I can’t leave him.”

“You’re not his dad.”

It came out far sharper than he was sure Sam meant.  Dean leaned forward and popped both of their beers open.  He usually didn’t drink—how could he, knowing how it had ended for Dad—but if anything called for it, it was this week so far.

It would be easier to just snap back at his brother, but Dean had enough drama going on his life right now, thank you very much.

“Okay.  What’s eating at you?”

Sam sighed. “It’s Eileen.  They want to transfer her to the New York office.  Give her a big promotion and everything.  It’s good—great—but she’s leaving.”

Considering the number of times that Dean had come home to the apartment only to find what should have been a sock-on-the-door kind of scenario, the fact that Sam had never actually managed to maneuver it into a proper relationship still confused him.  He’d been the one convinced he’d marry his law school girlfriend.

Then again, he’d been convinced he’d be a lawyer, too, and that had lasted all of four seconds.  So.

“Oh.  Sorry, man.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah.  It’s a stupid thing to be upset about, considering.”

Considering he’d very nearly been on that plane.  Dean opened up the pizza box.

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

Sam snatched the piece of pizza he’d been eyeing up. “Tell me how you really feel, Dean.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, feet up on the coffee table and pizza box balanced delicately on their thighs, not really talking, but sitting a little closer than they ordinarily would.

Dean found himself thinking, for the first time in a while, of Mom.  She probably would have taken Jack home herself, security detail be damned.  Her glare could have knocked even Benny into submission.  She would have made Jack a grilled cheese sandwich, forced him to go to bed, and told him that everything would be better in the morning.

Maybe he’d bring a grilled cheese sandwich when he went back.

“Hey, Sam, can you do me a favor?  There’s this guy.  Castiel Novak.  I need to know a bit about him.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I am _not_ doing a background check on a guy you want to bang, dude.”

“Who said anything about banging?” Had something in his tone implied that?  Cas was pretty hot, he’d give him that, but he was a _professional_.  “He’s Jack’s uncle.  One of them, anyway.   Kelly’s will says that his godfather should raise him, but it doesn’t specify _which_ godfather.”

His brother chewed his pizza thoughtfully. “Yeah, I can do a little digging.  It’s going to cost you laundry this week, though.”

As if he didn’t do it every week.

“Yeah, whatever.  I’ve got to get some sleep.  Night.”

He wasted about an hour of his precious night staring at the ceiling, trying to come up with a single reason Castiel Novak would be willing to fight for the nephew he didn’t really know.

* * *

 

“I need a favor.”

Running mostly on coffee and the freezing shower he’d dumped himself into this morning, Sam flung himself down into his seat next to Eileen in the press room.  She tucked her pencil behind her ear and looked him over carefully.

The few hours of respite had done wonders for Eileen, at least.  She’d changed her outfit and done something with her hair.  Sam considered complimenting it for a moment, but then, she’d probably just roll her eyes at him.

“Depends on what the favor is.”

Perfectly aware that they were in a room full of journalists, Sam kept his voice down when he wasn’t able to translate the story into ASL.  Eileen’s eyes flicked between his lips and his hands.

“I’ll see what I can find out.  You want information on the brother, too?”

Sam nodded. “Might as well.  He seems like a piece of work.”

A few hours later found Sam flopped on his back on the too-small cot in his too-small office with the roughest rough draft he’d ever composed in his life held above his face.  He was operating on the assumption that blood flow to his brain would make things work a little better.

At the sound of the door opening, he sat up.

“Eileen.  Hey!”

He patted the cot next to him.  Eileen at least attempted to give him a disapproving look before sitting down next to him, legs stretched out in front of her.

“Michael Novak.  Fifty years old.  Graduated from Yale Law, undergrad at Yale, too.  He’s been a high profile property lawyer in New York City since the mid-nineties.  He recently hired an analytics firm to start running approval numbers, so I don’t think Dean was wrong.  He’s planning to launch some sort of bid.”

It all lined up with what he’d been able to put together over the last few hours.  Sam placed his fingertips on his chin and drew them away.  _Thank you._

“And Castiel.  Forty-five.  He’s a little harder to pin down.  I tracked down a literal ton of research.  I don’t know how the guy sleeps, because there’s a _lot_ of it.  Like you said, he’s a botanist.  I’m not one hundred percent sure what he’s studying, exactly, but it uses a lot of long words.  He went to med school, but from what I could find out, he didn’t have the temperament to be a doctor.”

All of that jived with Sam’s research.  He squeezed her shoulder briefly in thanks.

“You want a coffee?  I can get something going.”

She smiled. “I’d like that, thanks.”

Two drinks with Eileen Leahy in two days.  He must have done something right.

* * *

Dean didn’t feel much refreshed after his night at home, but he hadn’t expected to be.  The White House staff, everyone from the Chief of Staff—a guy named Crowley who Dean liked to annoy on occasion—to the cleaning staff seemed to be running on fumes.  People had taken to snapping at each other, but only under their breath.  It was like working an incredibly tense library.

“Charlie!”

Up ahead of him, looking near tears, Charlie Bradbury slammed a briefing binder closed so fast that Dean was surprised she hadn’t broken one of her fingers.

“Dean.”

She wrapped her arms around him and hugged, a little tighter than she normally did.  Dean had a sneaking suspicion that she had spent even less time at home over the past few days than he had.  He squeezed back until Charlie’s shuddering breathing evened out.

“How are you?” he asked, holding her out at arm’s length.

“I’ve been better, obviously.”

He straightened her collar and pushed her flyaway hair behind her ear.  Finally, he took both her hands in his and held them loosely in front of them, the small contact calming them both down somewhat.

“Everyone’s been unexpectedly polite in the press room,” Charlie continued, making Dean realize that he’d probably missed about a paragraph of information while he’d been tidying her up. “Near death experiences will do that to you.  Or is it the knowledge that you could have died?  Does that count?”

Dean shrugged. “No clue.”

She sighed. “Okay.  I’ve got a briefing in about forty-nine seconds, so I’m gonna have to go.  How’s Jack?”

Dean gave her a gesture that very clearly meant ‘so-so’ before making his way towards the residence.  He walked in on Benny and Jack and—of course—Michael Novak, glaring daggers at Benny’s back.  His face cleared of any anger when he realized Dean was looking at him.

Benny glanced at him, confused. “Dean?  Aren’t you supposed to be in a meeting?

Jack jumped up and threw his arms around Dean’s waist, clearly happy to have another familiar figure around. Dean reached down and ruffled his hair, allowing him to stick a few moments past when he normally would.

“Meeting?”

“Crowley.  He wanted to talk to you.”

Dean arched his eyebrows.  Besides the occasional snarking, it wasn’t like Fergus Crowley ever had much to do with him.  At least not on official business anyway.  He couldn’t even begin to imagine what this could be about.

“Are you going to be all right here?” he asked, shooting Michael a suspicious glance.

He had no idea how he’d gotten past the rest of the security detail.  Dean’s last orders to the group had been to not let either Novak brother close until they’d worked out what their endgames were.

Benny rolled his eyes. “Go.”

And so Dean found himself winding back into the West Wing once more.  Once again, the entire place was unnaturally quiet. He passed three separate secretaries that he knew usually chatted up a storm.

In a time like this, he figured that Crowley wouldn’t mind if he just waltzed into the office, protocol be damned.  He’d never been much good at that sort of thing anyway.

“Agent Winchester.  Exactly the man I wanted to see.”

Crowley’s office, despite his high rank, looked pretty much like any of the other offices in the West Wing.  He had a stack of manila folders about a mile high on his desk and his inbox had pretty much vanished under the weight of a dozen envelopes.

If the rest of the West Wing looked like they hadn’t slept in a month, Crowley looked as if he’d been hit by a bus after wandering the streets for a month, not sleeping.  He plucked a pair of reading glasses off his nose, folded them, and placed them in his pocket.  Dean dropped into the indicated chair across his desk, sending a flurry of papers fluttering to the ground.  Crowley eyed them with the sort of helpless annoyance that Dean usually pulled out of Sam.

“The President wants an inauguration.”

Dean stared at him. “I’m sorry.  What?”

Roman had gotten sworn in almost the minute after President Kline had been confirmed dead.  From what Dean remembered from high school history, that was these things went—no pomp and circumstance, no glory.  Just business as usual, as much as that could be expected when Air Force One went down.

Crowley looked at him as if he were particularly stupid. “An inauguration.  With crowds and flags and the national anthem and a Bible.”

Dean resisted the urge to point out that he’d been at Kline’s, and at the ones before since he was a kid.  (Mom had been big on that kind of stuff.)  Instead, he leaned forward.

“I don’t get what that has to do with me.”

Sure, it would mean that Roman was going to be moving into residence and stuff, but that was going to happen already.  He’d known for the last few days that getting Jack out soon was going to be a priority.

“He wants Jack present.”

Dean stared. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I don’t kid.”

To be fair, he really didn’t.  Dean pinched the bridge of his nose in between his forefinger and thumb.  Sending Jack out into a public appearance when he was still reeling from his parents’ death—a public appearance that quite literally replaced his father—couldn’t be good for him.

Crowley seemed to read his mind. “It would be good for the country.  To heal.”

“Yeah?  And what about the kid?  Doesn’t he deserve to heal, too?”

Crowley’s face hardened. “When he’s no longer my responsibility, fine.  But right now, I’m not asking, and neither is President Roman.  This meeting was a courtesy, so that you’re ready.  Nothing more.”

He snapped the daybook in front of him shut.  Dean took that to mean that the conversation was over.

“Right.  Thanks.”

Fists clenched at his sides, Dean did everything in his power not to stomp out of the room.

 

 


	5. The Press Room

“You know,” Eileen said, deftly scooping noodles up with her chopsticks, “there was a news crew at Novak’s place a few days ago.  In case you wanted to know a bit more about him.”

She waggled her eyebrows at him.  One of the noodles slipped, but she chased it down.  Sam’s cheeks heated, which had nothing to do with the fact that he’d just dropped yet another noodle.  He _really_ wished she didn’t know about this.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Half an hour later, Sam found himself standing in front of the CNN offices, feeling like the collar of his rumbled dress shirt had gotten about six sizes too small.

Dean owed him about six meal choices after this.

Squaring his shoulders, he marched into the too-familiar building.  At the front desk, the security guard, a quiet, nervous-looking man named Garth, buzzed him in.  He opened his mouth, but when Sam shook his head, he returned to his lunch.

Sam subconsciously straightened his tie at the first whiff of lilac vanilla perfume when he reached the office.  Realizing it, he dropped his hand and his shoulders forward into the terrible posture she’d always chastised him for.

“Oh my God, if it isn’t Sam Winchester.  What brings you here?”

That was a _really_ good question.  Sam was questioning every single one of the life choices that had brought him to this moment.

“A story.”

Ruby crossed her arms and leaned back against her desk, eyes narrowing.

“And here I thought you just wanted to see me.”

Sam didn’t bother pointing out that if he had his way, he would never see Ruby again.  She had easily been the biggest crash and burn relationship of his life.  She’d thrown a stapler at his head when it was all said and done.

“Castiel Novak.  What do you know about him?”

Ruby’s suspicion deepened. “Aren’t you normally foreign policy coverage?”

So she was keeping up with his work, then.  He hadn’t expected that.

“Fine.  It’s not for a story.  It’s for Dean.”

Ruby snorted. “I’m not researching a guy he wants to bang.”

Oh God.  So that’s how their relationship had lasted as long as it had.  They thought scarily alike.

“Ruby.”

“Fine.  Castiel.  I know.  It was the first one out to his house, but his girlfriend seemed pretty insistent I didn’t talk to him.  I thought she was going to punch me in the nose.”

Sam frowned.  Surely if Castiel had a girlfriend that he lived with, he would have mentioned her.  It would have been a counter to Michael’s claim that he could provide a more stable household for Jack.  The guy might have it made financially, but he’d never found a wife to stick around for more than a handful of years.

“You didn’t find anything?”

The one thing he still liked about Ruby after everything was that, once she had a story, she would never give up on it.

“Nothing.  He was president of his high school’s Save the Bees club, but they had three members.  That as the last time he was in the public eye.  But the brother, Michael…I’d keep an eye on him.”

Sam knew that would be the most he’d possibly get out of Ruby.

“Well.  Thanks.  I’ve got to get going.”

Ruby quirked an eyebrow. “Sure you don’t have a few minutes?”

“Um.  Yeah.  No thanks.  Bye, Ruby.”

With that, he backed out of the office, waited until the door had fully shut behind him, and fled down the hallway.

What was there about Michael Novak?

* * *

“He wants a _what_?”

Even with Eileen’s usually controlled signing, she almost punched the table in front of her in surprise.  Charlie sighed.

“Like I said.  An inauguration.  And everyone in here is going along with it because no one wants to lose their job in the transition, least of all Crowley.”

Eileen frowned.   She had half a mind to start drafting a think piece about Crowley’s role in the change from Kline to Roman.  It was no secret that, while he was a fairly competent chief of staff, had had the habit of hitching his wagon to the fastest horse he could find and hoping that they could ride off into the sunset.  At the moment, Roman was certainly the most attractive horse.  She wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Crowley was gunning for vice president, not that Roman would ever select him.

“You’d think he was happy to see Kline dead.”

Charlie shrugged. “I’m not sure he’s considering the optics of the situation fully.  He wants to make it look like we’re just as strong as ever, but he’s not thinking about what it looks like to the American public.”

She looked as if she wanted to bury her head in her hands.  All Eileen could do was place her hand on her shoulder as comfortingly as she could.

“How are you going to spin it?”

Charlie shook her head. “I was kind of hoping you’d help me with it if I gave you an exclusive on it, but I know you hate Roman.”

Eileen shrugged. “Not too much to pass up a deal like that.  I’ll have it out tomorrow morning.  How are you going to keep it quiet?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Human sacrifice?” She checked her watch. “Are you at the eleven o’clock?”

Eileen nodded, so she followed Charlie out of her office and toward the briefing room. 

“I heard you’re leaving,” Charlie said as they turned into the hallway. “I was going to congratulate you on the promotion sooner, but it must have gotten buried on my desk.”

Eileen didn’t point out that it wasn’t a promotion quite yet.  Just the promise of one.

“Yeah.  I’ll miss this, though.”

“This?” she asked, a knowing smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Typical Charlie.  Even with the world coming down around their ears, she still found the time to make a crack about Eileen’s love life.  Or lack of.  The two women rounded yet another corner and picked up the pace at the sight of Charlie’s secretary waving frantically at them to get a move on.

“He never said he wanted anything serious,” she said with a shrug as they drew near the briefing room. “I really thought he would, but—well, I’m less conflicted about taking it.  I don’t know.  I feel like I’ll be far away from all the action.  Not sure how I feel about that.”

Charlie leaned over and knocked their shoulders together. “And of course you’d miss me.”

Eileen smiled. “Of course.”

It helped being the quasi-girlfriend of a reporter who’d grown up alongside the press secretary, but she’d really gotten to like Charlie these last few years.

Eileen took her normal seat beside Sam.

“Dean told me he wanted an inauguration,” Sam said, his fingers clumsily spelling out the word he didn’t know.

Eileen showed him the sign for inauguration, opening her hands wide.  She tried to stamp down the wave of affection that rose up when he copied the sign a few times until he had it down.

Maybe it would be harder to leave than she thought.

* * *

“Well, of course I’d be willing to attend.  In fact, it would be an honor.”

Dean spent a fair amount of his time around politicians, but he didn’t think he’d ever met a person quite as naturally slimy as Michael Novak.

Figured that he’d want the New York seat.

Struggling not to roll his eyes, Dean turned towards Cas.  Unlike his brother, he hadn’t rushed to answer.  He sat staring straight ahead, brow furrowed as if he were attempting calculus in his head.

Although judging by the degrees Sam had uncovered in his research, that might have been easier for Cas than the average person.

“I assume you want Jack to come?”

At Dean’s affirmative nod, his frown deepened.

“Do you think that would be good for him?  The crowds, the reporters, the—”

“He’d be fine,” Michael said, waving his hand dismissively.

From the way that Cas fell silent, it seemed rather routine.  Dean shut his mouth.  If there was anything he’d learned from his years around these types of people, it was that it was easiest to shut up and let them talk.

“It might even be cathartic for him,” Michael continued. “Circle of life, the strength of his country behind him…”

Dean wanted to point out that the symbolism would probably be lost on a twelve-year-old.  Instead, he turned back to Cas.

“I’m not a fan of the plan, either, but it’s out of our hands.  President Roman wants a show of support from President Kline’s staff and family.  That’s us. You don’t have to, but I think Jack would appreciate the support.”

Michael leaped in again. “Of course I’ll support him.  He’s my nephew for Christ’s sake.”

He clapped a too-friendly hand on Dean’s shoulder.  Dean bit down on the inside of his cheek.

When the door closed behind Michael, both men sighed in relief.

“I suppose I’ll need a suit,” Cas said dismally.

For the first time in days, Dean really smiled. “I know a guy.”

 

 


	6. Alexandria

Castiel hadn’t been in the dating pool for quite some time, so he wasn’t sure if taking someone to buy a suit constituted as flirting.

“Don’t you have to be with Jack?” he asked as they got off the metro in Alexandria.

Dean shook his head. “He headed back to school today, said he wanted to feel normal.  So I let Benny and them take care of security.  Sam said he’d kill me if I didn’t take a bit of a break.”

He took the steps up into the sunlight two at a time, so Castiel had to double his pace to follow him.  The streets were slightly less crowded here than they were in the heart of the city.  Cas took his first full breath in what felt like months.

He refocused on the conversation and nodded. “Your brother.”

“And the weirdest mother hen roommate you’ve ever met.  You’d think he was the one to raise _me._ ”

Cas paused. “Raise?”

Instantly, he kicked himself.  This was what Meg meant when she called him socially inept, however affectionately.  He always put his foot directly in his mouth.

Dean didn’t seem bothered. “Yeah.  Mom died when I was eighteen, so I fought to get custody of Sammy.  He was a snot nosed little brat, but I wasn’t about to let somebody else take him.  Family, you know?”

Cas nodded.  Even a week ago, he wouldn’t have realized what that meant.  But thinking about Jack’s face—

“He’s only four years younger than me, so we were pretty much looking after each other, but I still tease him all the time about it.”

His face darkened slightly.  Cas tried to imagine him at eighteen, the five o’clock shadow coming in far patchier, with a kid brother by his side.  He certainly couldn’t have done the same at eighteen.  He’d been buried in college applications, worried about how he was going to survive the interview portion of his science fair entry (answer: he hadn’t).

“That’s why I worry about Jack.  I know what it feels like to just—be adrift.” Dean waved his hand vaguely. “And yeah, he won’t have to worry about money or anything, but he’s got the eyes of the world on him.  It’s going to be so hard.”

Cas tugged at his collar. “I want to help him.  I need to—to make it up to Kelly.  I mean, I want to help him, too, it’s not just because I’m guilty, but I need you to know where I’m coming from.”

The hand that brushed his wrist as Dean answered, “I know.”—was that flirting, too?  Or was it just Dean trying to seem like he understood?

Either way, it wasn’t exactly something he had the energy to dwell on right now.

“Course, the only reason Sammy and me were as well off as we were was Bobby.”

And with that, Dean ushered him into a small, neatly-kept shop with suits in the windows.  A man with a pin clamped in between his teeth made his way out of the back room at the sound of the bell tinkling over the door.

“Dean!  I thought you forgot where I lived.”

Bobby, Castiel assumed, clapped a hand on Dean’s shoulder, nowhere near as annoyed as his words had suggested.  Cas hung back, trying to work out how on Earth an Alexandria tailor several decades his senior had somehow wound up friends with Dean.

“It’s been a rough week.”

Bobby let out a sigh. “Yeah, it has.  Come here, kid.”

He tugged Dean into a hug.  Over his left shoulder, he examined Castiel, the pin still hanging out of his mouth somehow managing to make him look even more intimidating.

“You’re hanging out with Novak in your free time?”

How the hell had he known who Cas was?  It wasn’t like he was a recognizable face like President Kline, or even Kelly or Jack or his brother.  Cas wilted a little under the scrutiny.  Usually nobody paid attention to him for that long.

“How—”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Bobby knows everybody.  He does discounted rates for all of the new reporters when they’re in town for the first time and so broke that they can’t afford to look the part.”

“Pays off, too,” Bobby said, somehow managing to enunciate perfectly even while pulling the pin out of his mouth. “I get all the dirt early.  It’s harder now than it was when the news came once a day, but I still like to get the scoop now and then.”

“Oh.” Cas wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so he followed the little voice that sounded eerily like Meg in his head and offered his hand for Bobby to shake. “Well.  I’m glad to be properly introduced.”

Bobby bustled around behind his counter and pulled out a measuring tape.  At Dean’s nod, Cas lifted his arms for Bobby to start his work.  It took all of three minutes.  Castiel had never been measured for anything in his life, but he thought it seemed pretty fast.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Bobby said. “Hang on.”

He vanished into the rows of suits that lined the walls and the racks nearby.  Dean seemed more relaxed in this little shop than he ever had in the White House.  Cas kept finding himself glancing his way.

“Bobby is good at what he does,” Dean said, reaching over to toy with a particularly expensive-looking suit jacket hanging next to him. “And underneath it all, he’s a big softie.”

Cas somehow doubted that, but he didn’t say so as Bobby hurried back, a suit in his arms.

“Dressing room is back there.”

At Dean’s nudge at his shoulder, Cas headed into the back room and changed.  The suit didn’t fit perfectly, but it fit a hell of a lot better than anything else he’d ever bought.  Meg called him fashionably challenged when she was feeling charitable.

He still felt ridiculous as he exited the room.  Or at least he did until Dean let out a wolf whistle.  He straightened his shoulders a little—Meg was always on his case about the way he always seemed to curve in on himself—and straightened the jacket a little.  Okay, so maybe he did look pretty good.

So when he saw Bobby glare, his face fell.

“What?”

Dean laughed from his corner as Bobby circled, pinching and pinning the fabric in a few places.  Cas hadn’t even known that suits were supposed to fit like that.  He’d never actually altered one in his life.  Usually they just fit his legs and didn’t drag on the ground and he called it good.

“Are you going to let him go soon, Bobby?” Dean finally piped up.

Bobby raised two bushy eyebrows at him. “I don’t tell you how to do your job, Winchester.”

Despite his joking, he finished up the job pretty quickly after that.  He promised to have the suit delivered to Cas’s hotel room before the inauguration and then Cas and Dean walked back out into the street.

“You clean up good,” Dean said, nudging his shoulder.

“I haven’t seen you out of a suit yet.”

Oh God.  He couldn’t believe he’d just said that.  Cas felt like burying his face in his hands.  To his surprise, Dean winked.

“Mom used to call them monkey suits.  The feds around DC drove her crazy.  I think she probably rolled over in her grave when I left the force to join the Secret Service.”

They headed down into another metro station.  Cas kept sneaking looks of Dean out of the corner of his eye.  With almost every other person on the planet, he felt stressed within fifteen minutes of talking to them alone.  It wasn’t like that with Dean.

He didn’t feel like a burden.

* * *

“You’re here again.”

Residence had been locked down even more than it normally was lately, so Dean had spent the last week wandering around halls empty of everything but his coworkers.  Except, apparently, Cas Novak.  Again.

He waved, awkwardly. “Benny let me in.  I was going to take Jack to see the Mall.”

Dean refrained from pointing out that a) Jack was a twelve-year-old who probably thought that sounded like the most boring thing on Earth and that b) he lived in the most historic building in the country.  Cas was trying his best here.  Instead, he smiled.

“We’ll need to get some security together, but I think he’d be happy to get out of the house.”

The mental image of the lobster red color that Crowley would turn if he knew they planned to take Jack out of the relative safety of the White House made it all the better of an idea.

It didn’t take long to gather everyone together.  They’d been going a bit stir crazy themselves over the last week.

Benny loped up, Jack in his wake. “Ready?”

Mercifully, no one tried to make any small talk as they left the building.  Dean plopped an overly large pair of sunglasses on Jack’s nose.  The president’s kid was visible enough, much less the dead president’s kid.  It was a testament to how much he wanted to leave that Jack didn’t comment on the outfit or the destination.

Dean fell into step beside Cas. “Trying to win Best Uncle award?”

Cas blinked, the same utterly bemused expression from Bobby’s on his face.

“I thought he’d be able to show me around.  I’ve never been down here.”

Dean gaped at him.  The Mall had been a constant background to his childhood.  Mom had loved everything about it.  She’d insisted on monthly picnics by the reflecting pool.  Dean had gotten frustrated with the routine by the time he was fourteen, but he still had one of those cheesy I <3 DC shirts that she’d gotten him at their last outing.

“You’re kidding.”

Cas shrugged. “There was a class trip once, but I didn’t want to take the bus ride, so I stayed home.”

Dean was about to launch into a speech that was a hybrid of Mom and Sam, when he’d had one too many, anyway.  They were both history nerds, as much as they tended to critique the present.  Jack beat him to it.

“Mom liked the Vietnam War memorial,” he said.

They’d decided to walk, which Dean knew perfectly well would give everyone else on staff a heart attack.  It would be stupid to go to the trouble to be undercover and show up in a car with an escort, though, and he wanted to give Jack as much of a normal afternoon as he was able.

As if he could sense some of the tension in the air, Jack stuck close to Dean.  Under most circumstances, like any other kid his age, he tried to test the limits of what he was allowed to do.  Seeing him like this damn near broke Dean’s heart.

“Why don’t we visit that first?” Dean asked.

Members of his team split off one by one as they got into the Mall.  For the most part, the tourists didn’t seem to notice.  The few native citygoers out and about just averted their eyes and moved on.

Funny.  Apparently national emergencies brought out the best in people.

When they were finally the last three members of their group, Cas turned to Jack.

“Did she take you often?”

It was the first time Dean had ever heard him reference his sister other than her death.  He couldn’t bring himself to disturb the moment.  Instead, he glanced over at Cas and Jack out of the corner of his eye.  Jack drifted closer to Cas than he ever had before.

“In the campaign and when Dad was senator.  But not since Dad won.  Not much.”

He didn’t sound bitter about it.  Something tightened in Dean’s chest.  Over the years, he’d met plenty of Secret Service agents, former and current, who’d dealt with dozens of First Kids.  From what he’d gathered, Jack was one of the most agreeable.  He didn’t complain at state dinners.  He endured photo ops.  He didn’t even say a word when his parents were dragged off in a hundred different directions without him.

Cas’s voice was quiet when he responded. “I remember what that was like.”

Jack uncrossed his arms for the first time in several hours. “Huh?”

“Your grandparents ran a massive company.  When it wasn’t directly work, it was talking to investors, trying to get the right angle.  It never seemed like they had time to spare.  Your mother and I, and your uncle, we had each other growing up, but it never was enough.”

Dean shook his head.  He wouldn’t have traded the creaky stairwells or faulty hot water tanks of his childhood apartments for the gushy upbringings Cas and Jack had both had for the world.  He’d had Mom and her weird history lessons (“Question everything!”), a brother he loved more than anything.

Jack’s lower lip wobbled. “I miss them.”

Dean instinctively reached for his shoulder, but Cas beat him to it.  He slipped an arm around Jack’s small frame.  To Dean’s surprise, he tucked his head into Cas’s side as they reached the memorial.

“I know.”

Dean found himself staring at the reflection of uncle and nephew in the mirrored wall, Jack sniffling quietly into Cas’s coat.  Despite himself, he felt a little better about their chances.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the kind comments :D


	7. The Oval Office

The day of the inauguration dawned bright and clear, despite Dean’s best mental attempts to chide the sky into storming.  It took him a full three snooze cycles (and Sam smacking his bedroom door once he realized Dean wasn’t getting up) to drag himself out of bed.

Sam eyed him drowsily over his Cheerios as he stumbled into the kitchen, still blinking gummy sleep out of his eyes.  He estimated that he’d gotten about two hours between all the tossing and turning and how long it had taken to get up the heart to leave Jack last night.

“You look like hell,” Sam observed.

Dean glared, best as he was able with his left eye still half shut against the flickering bulb of the light above them—someone really had to fix that, but that would require a free afternoon that neither he nor Sam would have for the foreseeable future.

“Nice observation.  I can see they’re teaching journalists well these days.  You’re sharper than ever.”

This was the sort of day that would normally be cause for some bacon, but Dean couldn’t find it in himself to bother.  Instead, he nabbed Sam’s Cheerios and ate them straight out of the box.  It was a testament to the day that Sam didn’t cuss him out for it.

They ate in silence.  Dean normally turned out the radio and he and Sam duked it out over Big 100 and NPR, but it didn’t seem like the right time for classic rock and it wasn’t like either of them wanted to hear the news.  Dean ducked back into his room to change and emerged, still scowling.

“Is my tie straight?”

“As you are,” Sam said without missing a beat.

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

He still attempted to straighten out his tie.

They left early, correctly anticipating that the Metro would be packed.  President Roman wasn’t a particularly popular figure, or at least, not any more popular than any other man before him that had been inaugurated under normal circumstances, but people loved a good tragedy.

Well, that, and they liked the opportunity to shout “USA!  USA!” on the Metro at five thirty in the morning.

By the time they reached their stop, Dean was about ready to punch the guy next to him right in the American flag he had painted on his face.  This was precisely the sort of thing that Roman, Crowley, and the rest of the administration wanted to see:  Americans celebrating just as bombastically as they would on the Fourth of July, proving that the country was stronger than just one man. 

Having known that man, and being responsible for his kid, Dean couldn’t help the sour taste in the back of his throat.

“It’ll all be over soon,” Sam muttered as they stepped off.

Dean sighed.  Everything in the West Wing would settle down into a new sort of normal in no time.  Even with the drama of everything that had happened this last week, there was still a country to run and a new disaster every morning.  But Jack’s life would never be the same.

By the time they reached the West Wing, everything was a complete mess.  Sam said his goodbyes and ducked over towards the briefing room while Dean set his shoulders and headed towards the meeting he’d been dreading ever since he’d found out about it.

“I have a five forty-five.”

Rowena’s desk hadn’t been tidied, much less cleaned out.  Dean guessed she thought she would be sticking around as the administration switched out.  He couldn’t blame her; Roman would be hard pressed to find a secretary half as aggressive, or as competent.

“That would be in three minutes, dearie.”

Dean rolled his eyes.  Before he could tell her that he had places to be, whether her damn boss was ready or not, Benny rounded the corner with Jack in tow.  Dean nearly bit down on his tongue to stop himself from storming into the Oval Office and getting into a screaming match with POTUS.

He settled for hissing in Benny’s ear. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

To Rowena’s credit, she set about distracting Jack as Dean boiled over in his rage.  Benny placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I know, brother.  Just hang in there.”

He usually calmed Dean down pretty easily, but he was about three seconds away from straight up decking Roman in the face.  Back during the race, he’d disliked the man for his views on tax reform.  Now he had an entirely different reason to hate him.

At precisely five forty-five, Rowena looked up. “All right.  The President will see you now.”

Dean tried and failed to set his face into something more neutral.  Whatever Roman had planned, it wasn’t going to make Jack feel any better about the situation at hand, that was for damn sure.  This was all about image.  Dean would bet a year’s salary that this little story would be leaked to the press in no time.

“Come on, Jack.”

Jack shadowed him into the Oval Office.  Dean hadn’t spent much time there.  For all of his virtues as a president, President Kline had been a rather distant father.  He liked a distinct separation between his home and his work, never mind that they were practically physically connected here in the White House.  So what if one half took up so much more time than the other?  As Jack’s agent, Dean didn’t find himself there often.

“Jack.  Agent Winchester.  Thank you both for coming.”

Roman got to his feet and actually crossed the desk.  Dean fought his instinct to get in Roman’s face as he pulled Jack into what must have been the most uncomfortable hug in his life.  To his credit, Jack endured it, mouth set in a grim line.

“I’d like you to sit with my family for the inauguration.  After all, I’d like to think of us as family now.  We’ve been through quite a lot recently.”

 _We._ Jack had lost his parents and his home and the entire life he’d finally gotten used to.  Roman had gotten the promotion of a lifetime.  Dean’s hand curled into a fist at his side.  When he caught Roman looking at it, he forced it to relax.

“Mr. President, with all due respect, security wasn’t prepared for—”

Roman waved a hand dismissively. “It will be no trouble for my team, I assure you.”

Dean glowered.  While he didn’t have doubts that Roman’s security team was very good, they weren’t used to this.  Getting used to the new high profile of your client was always difficult.  Especially when someone decided to throw a monkey wrench in the proceedings.

“Sir—”

He fixed Dean with an icy stare. “Enough.  Jack?”

Dean was about to say that they could hardly expect a twelve-year-old to make a decision like this about his own safety, but one look at Jack’s face shut him up.  He clearly just wanted to go home.

“That’s okay.”

Right now, Dean didn’t care if Roman was the president or if he got elected the next six cycles in a row and declared himself emperor.  He grabbed Jack’s shoulders gently and steered him towards the exit, not even bothering to offer Roman a goodbye as he went.

* * *

“Where’s Jack?”

The White House press corps had just filtered into their pen, several yards to the side of what would be Roman’s podium in an hour or so.  Sam glanced sideways at Eileen, who searched the seats Dean had said would be theirs for sign of him.­

Sure enough, Dean sat in the second row behind a string of officials Sam thought only a handful of Americans could identify by face—a few Cabinet secretaries, one of Kline’s major donors, and Charlie.  Despite the cross look on her face, she offered Sam a wave when she caught him looking.  Even Cas Novak and his infinitely more recognizable brother Michael sat stiff in the seats in front of Dean.  But Jack was nowhere to be seen among the crowd. 

“Maybe Roman decided to let him off the hook?”

Eileen just shook her head. “I know it’s horrible, but if I were his communications director, I would have dragged Jack in here, too.”

He wanted to protest, but Sam knew perfectly well that it would have been his advice, too.  Support from the former president’s family went a very long way, even when that support came from two brothers-in-law who probably hadn’t even sent a Christmas card in years and a preteen.  It was the reason he’d had this inauguration in the first place.

Sam glanced down at his phone.  Every so often, he got texts from Dean complaining about some facet of his job, but evidently he’d decided that this was a question of national security.  Or, at least, Jack’s, which Dean probably found a little more important.­­

All he could do was shrug. “As long as he doesn’t make Jack speak.”

That seemed a little cold even for Roman, who’d spent the entirety of the campaign trying to convince voters that he wasn’t some sort of prehistoric sea monster with no soul.  Sam really hoped that wasn’t the case.

They both gave up on shielding their eyes from the glare at the same time.

“You’re going to get sunburnt,” Sam told her, brushing a hand absently over the back of her neck.

She’d pulled her hair back in a bun again.  Sam considered telling her how nice it looked like that, but he was too preoccupied by the smirk on her face.  Which also looked good, though he wouldn’t admit _that_ at gunpoint.

“I’ve been using you as an umbrella for two years, Sam.”

He glanced down at his shadow; sure enough, Eileen had carefully positioned both of them to make it fall directly where she was standing.

“Who’re you going to get to do that when you’re in New York?” he joked, trying to keep the words as light as possible.

The smile on her face flickered somewhat.  Or maybe that was Sam projecting again.  He found himself doing more and more of that.  Funny what living with Dean full time for the first time since he was a kid could do to him.

“No idea,” she said after a moment.

They both fell silent after that, neither one willing to contemplate what it would be like in just a few short weeks.  Sam had told his brother that it would all be over soon, but clearly the weird normal that the people who worked in the White House thrived on wouldn’t return for quite some time yet.

After about ten more minutes of scanning the seats, Eileen was the one to pick Jack out.  He sat, pretty much indistinguishable from the rest of Roman’s kids at a distance.  Though he seemed far less interested in the proceedings.

Screw security.  Sam tapped out a quick supportive message to his brother.

_Hang in there._

Finally, the festivities started.  For all of the pomp and circumstance that Roman had encouraged among civilians, he’d managed to rein it in for the inauguration itself. There were far few marching bands and the like.  Still, Sam had to focus pretty hard on his story, or Dean’s anger would leech through.

A tug on his suit jacket sleeve.  At his questioning glance, Eileen looked meaningfully up at the box where Jack had been sitting.

Emphasis on had.

Sam was about to tell her that it had probably proven too much for him and that his brother had managed to sneak him out early, but a quick glance back at Charlie’s seating area proved it.  Dean’s head swung back and forth, a searching look that Sam still recognized from getting lost in department stores.

Jack was gone.

* * *

 

“Is he going to be okay over there?”

Cas cast a look over to where Jack was seated, looking fall too small in his suit jacket.  Whoever had tied his tie had done a very poor job of it.  The urge to straighten it nearly bowled Cas over.  Was that what parenting felt like?

“He’ll be fine, Castiel.”

Michael.  He clapped a hand on Cas’s shoulder, smiling broadly.  When a pair of cameras aimed at them, he gave them a coy wave.  Cas’s stomach did a flip.  So far he’d been doing a pretty decent job of keeping his head amidst the crowd, but the reminder that the eyes of the world were literally upon them—and Jack—made him want to curl up in his bed at the hotel for the next millennium.

“I don’t like this,” Castiel said dubiously, craning his neck.

A particularly tall, wiry man who Castiel probably should recognize but didn’t stepped into his line of sight.  Cas accepted the cue and took his seat.  Behind him, Dean sat, glowering.  A red haired woman beside him ran a hand down his back.

Something like jealousy rose in Cas’s chest.  He fought it back down.

“I don’t think we’ve met!”

She thrust a hand right in Cas’s face.  He jumped a little, but the warm look in her eyes made him take it anyway.

“Charlie Bradbury.  I’m the Press Secretary.” She lowered her voice. “Your sister was honestly one of the best people I’ve ever worked with.”

Cas wanted to argue that Kelly hadn’t been doing a job.  She’d been her husband’s wife and that was all there was to it.  But another, quieter, part of him realized that it had been a job.  One that his sister had excelled at.

“Thank you,” he said instead.

Charlie patted him on the shoulder and withdrew.  Dean leaned forward to take her place.

“Well, at least your suit looks like it fits.  Bobby is a bit of a miracle worker.”

Despite the situation, despite the worry for Jack that prickled over his body like a second skin, Dean managed to tug a smile out of him.

“He told me that I’ve been wearing the wrong shirt size for years.”

The two men exchanged a tired smile at that.  Behind them, Cas caught a glance of Charlie’s eyebrows raising out of the corner of his eye.  He flushed and turned his head back to facing Jack.

“This has all settled one thing for me at least,” Dean said darkly. “There’s no way I’m letting Jack stay in DC.”

Michael looked scandalized.  For a few blissful moments, Cas had been able to forget that he was there.

“Of course he isn’t!” he said, somehow managing not to realize that no one wanted him to speak.  Or maybe he just didn’t care. “He’ll be moving in with me in my penthouse.”

He put emphasis on the last word, as if Dean could have possibly missed it.  Cas resisted the urge to roll his eyes. 

It occurred to him suddenly that If Jack went to live with Michael, Dean and the rest of his team would likely have to come with him.  The thought of Dean having to put up with Michael’s constant…Michaelness was enough to make Cas shudder, despite the relative warmth. 

Spring had come to DC and Kelly wasn’t there to see it.

Cas’s throat closed over for what felt like the millionth time that week as the speakers started.  To be perfectly honest, he wasn’t all that interested in the proceedings.  Until Kelly’s husband had announced his candidacy, Cas would be lucky to be able to tell you who the Vice President was, much less anything about the actual inaugural ceremony.

“Where’s he going?”

Dean stood, suddenly, drawing the eyes of everyone in their vicinity.  Charlie’s face went white, despite the slight sunburn beginning to glow on her cheeks.  Cas’s heart plunged.

“What?”

“Jack!”

Dean took off, stepping on the Secretary of Agriculture and nearly shoving the Secretary of State over altogether.  Cas spent about two seconds paralyzed by the thought of drawing so much attention and possibly the gaze of a TV network before he managed to pull himself together.  Ignoring Michael’s halfhearted attempts to keep him in his seat, Cas followed Dean’s lead.  For the first time in his life, people parted to get out of his way.  That probably had more to do with the weirdness of the situation, but Cas couldn’t help a small surge of pride anyway.

“Really?” Dean snapped when Cas broke through the crowd and made it to his side.

“He’s my nephew!”

A silent understanding passed between the two.  Cas wasn’t going to leave, and Dean knew better than to try to shake off a Novak from dealing with Kelly.  For all of the general terribleness of his childhood, Castiel’s parents had done a remarkable job of instilling in him a strange ability to get what he wanted.

“Fine.  Stay close.”

Seized by the sudden thought that this maybe wasn’t the safest place in the world despite the Secret Service agents swarming all over the place (not to mention the abundance of private security and police pulled together for the event), Cas followed his word perhaps a little too literally.  If Dean had a problem with Cas almost glued to his back, he didn’t let any indication of it show.

“Maybe he just needed water?”

Cas swallowed around a dry throat; whether it came from panic about Jack or the heat, he didn’t know.  Dean just shook his head.

“Kid’s sat through a lot more boring ceremonies in much more uncomfortable places, believe me.”

Suddenly, Cas remembered the first time he’d seen Kline and his family on the television.  He’d been tuning in to PBS for a special they’d been airing about a specific breed of lily he’d been reading up on.  But when he’d turned on the television, he’d been greeted by the Democratic National Convention and a smiling Kline.  Beside him, hand looped through Jack’s, Kelly had smiled and waved like she’d been doing it all her life.

Had his mother still been alive then, she would have died of pride.

At the time, he’d been so preoccupied by the sight of his sister that he hadn’t had much energy to spare for noticing Jack.  He’d done a lot of that until now, when he didn’t have any other choice.

“What do you mean, secured area?” Dean demanded, voice growing louder.

Even with the faint buzz of all the people around them whispering, his voice still carried.  A few heads turned, including a few members of the new president’s entourage.  A bearded man in a sharp dark suit in particular took a moment to narrow his eyes at Dean threateningly before turning back to the stage.

Roman took the podium and started to speak.  Castiel’s fingernails dug into his palms deep enough to make little indents.

“Sir, no one is allowed through—”

“ _I’m_ security, dumbass.  I’m part of what makes this damn area secure.”

The guard simply shook his head.  Cas had about a split second warning before Dean started waving his arms like a maniac.  Every little social anxiety-fueled nightmare Cas had ever had came true at once.

“Crowley!  Crowley, you son of a bitch, look at me!”

The man in the suit that Cas had noticed earlier finally turned back towards them.  Utterly nonplussed by the mess in front of him, he excused himself from a whispered conversation he was having with a redhaired woman next to him and waltzed down to their level.

“For God’s sake, Agent Winchester.”

“Jack.  Is.  Missing.”

“Of course he’s not,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Cas’s throat managed to unstick. “Turn around, Mr. Crowley.”

He pointed at Jack’s vacant seat.  The smarmy expression dropped from Crowley’s face so quickly that it might as well have skydived.

The next hour passed in a blur.  Cas was jostled by so many people that he felt like he needed about a dozen showers.  He stuck as closely as possible to Dean’s side; more than once, he reached back to guide Cas through the crowd.

By the time the crowd thinned out, they had all accepted the same truth—Jack was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for all the kind words. You guys make my day :D


	8. The Security Offices

Later, Sam would be hard-pressed to describe the day to someone who asked.  Luckily, he took enough notes to cobble together a piece for his editor, but it was hardly the best work of the career.  He couldn’t be bothered to improve it, though.  After so long of living shoulder to shoulder with his brother, Dean’s anxiety was transferable to Sam, even though they didn’t speak all day.

Besides that, he really did care about Jack on his own.  Thanks to Dean, he’d gotten to know the kid pretty well, and he liked him.

“Do you have food in your apartment?”

Sam jumped at the sound of a voice behind him.  Eileen laid a gentle hand on his shoulder as she turned him around so she could read his lips.

“Dean always makes sure we’ve got something, yeah.”

Sam was so utterly terrible at remembering to feed himself that Dean often left pieces of food—an apple, a box of crackers—along his path of getting ready in the morning.

“Great,” she said, forcing a cheerful smile. “You can make me dinner, then.”

Sam shot Dean a quick text to let him know there would be something (poorly) home-cooked when he got home if he wanted it.

The little _read_ sticker didn’t appear.

As they broke into the last few rays of sunlight, it felt like a weight fell off of Sam’s shoulders.  Usually, working in the White House felt like a dream—a long, tiring, sometimes infuriating dream, sure—but these last few days had been something more of a nightmare.

“Have you even seen Dean today?” Sam asked.

Eileen shook her head as they stepped on to the metro. “No.”

Sam pretended not to notice that when they sat down next to each other in the car, they were pressed together far closer than ordinary.

She linked her hand with his as they walked towards the apartment.  Sam tried not to read too much into that.  Clearly, they were just friends supporting each other after yet another horrific day in a string of horrific days at work. 

“We really have to talk to the landlord about this key,” Sam grunted as he fought with the lock.

He almost didn’t notice the figure slumped in the living room.  It took Eileen tugging on his sleeve to make him realize that it was his brother sitting in the darkness.

“Dean?”

Eileen ducked toward the kitchen. “I’m gonna make coffee.”

Sam quickly shoved down the thought that there was no way he could let her go to New York without him as he made his way over to his brother.

“Dean!”

He dropped to one knee beside him, flicking on one of their crappy lamps as he went.  The situation, thrown into the sharp relief of the light, looked worse.

Dean waved at him with a hand clutching a bottle of whiskey as if it were a bottle of beer.  Sam swore under his breath and tugged it out of his unprotesting grasp.

“Dean, come on.”

Without Sam’s permission, a memory surfaced.  His brother sitting at a card table—no proper furniture for them in those days—bent over like he had the worst stomachache imaginable.

Sam had dropped his backpack off his shoulders—he’d been what, then, a sophomore?—and run over.  He remembered thinking that the world couldn’t dare take his brother from him, too.  It had been the one year anniversary of Mom.

“I shouldn’t have let Roman—”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Sam cut in fiercely. “He’s the president of the United States, Dean.  He wouldn’t have let you talk him out of it.”

That, and Roman was perhaps the most stubborn son of a bitch that Sam had ever met, but he didn’t bother pointing that out.

“It’s my job!” Dean burst out. “It’s my job to keep him safe, it’s my job to look after him!  Do you have any idea what Kelly would say if she knew—”

“She’d tell you that she’s grateful for everything you’ve done this week.  Don’t be dumb, Dean, come on.”

He patted Dean on the shoulder and stood, the whiskey bottle still firmly in hand.

“Where’d you even get this?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Bought it.  Crowley says it’s the good stuff.”

Okay, so Dean might need a loan to pay off that next credit card bill, then.  Crowley had stupidly expensive tastes, considering his government salary.

Sam marched off to the kitchen to pour it in the sink.  On his way, he passed Eileen, who signed to him one of the first signs he’d ever learned in ASL—decaf. 

By the time he returned to the living room, Eileen had the situation under control.  She’d shoved the cup into Dean’s hand and set about tidying.  She’d also turned on a few more lights.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Sam reiterated, making sure Dean caught his eye.

“The best people in the world are looking for him.  They’ll find him,” Eileen added.

When she plucked up a blanket Dean had tossed on the ground and folded it, Dean signed a quick _thank you_ in her direction.

“Drink your coffee and get to bed,” Sam said gently.

He and Eileen took seats on the couch.

Eileen’s thumb moved in a slow, gentle circle on his knee.  Sam wasn’t even sure if she knew she was doing it.

At long last, Dean shuffled off to bed.  Some of the tension in the room left with him, but not as much as Sam would have expected.

“He’s going to drive himself crazy worrying,” Eileen said, shaking her head.

Sam fumbled around in the couch cushions until he retrieved the remote.  Despite his print journalist aversion to television news, he couldn’t focus on anything else anyway.

He groaned at the sight of the face on the screen.  Despite the circumstances, Eileen still let out a huff of laughter at his reaction.

“We’re live with Michael Novak, brother to the late First Lady and, of course, uncle to Jack,” Ruby said, aiming her microphone at the man next to her.

Sam remembered the story the _Wall Street Journal_ had run about him a while back, so he would have recognized the face even without the introduction.  Michael Novak didn’t look like the last few days had affected him at all.

Even Sam had a bit of perpetual five o’clock shadow on his chin that he hadn’t had time to shave, and it wasn’t like his sister was dead and his nephew missing

“I have a message for my nephew’s kidnapper.”

Michael sounded very old, then, and looked more tired than he had a moment before.  Sam wondered if it was genuine.

“We will find you, and we will make you pay for what you have put my family through.”

They left the TV on, various pundits and experts droning in the background, casting a dullish blue light on the living room.  When Sam woke up the next morning, it was with a crick in his neck and Eileen in his lap.

* * *

Dean woke with a raging headache, but his thoughts were a little less fuzzy than he would have thought.  Apparently he still had a pretty decent amount of alcohol tolerance, even all these years later.  He had a little bit of trouble getting his tie to tie correctly, but other than that, he ate the scrambled eggs Sam had made and got out of the door without incident.

When he walked into the security office, he nearly had a heart attack.

“ _Cas_?”

The sleeping bag on the floor shifted as the man inside unzipped it.  Sure enough, a messy, dark head of hair emerged.  Cas blinked blearily in the sudden light; he’d had his head tucked inside the sleeping bag for the night.

“I wanted to be the first to know if there was any news,” he said, voice rough with sleep, “so I went and bought this sleeping bag.  Your floor is very uncomfortable.”

Dean reached down and offered him his hand.  Cas tried a few unsuccessful wiggles to try to escape the confines of the sleeping bag, but it clearly wasn’t working.  He accepted the hand with a—okay, pretty adorable—look of annoyance.

“I’ll put in a call with housekeeping and ask if I can get a gushier carpet.”

For a moment, the dark cloud hanging over both of them seemed to recede.  Then, it swept back over the room.  The gummy smile on Cas’s face that Dean liked more than he cared to admit drained away.

“Is there news?” Cas pressed.

Dean shook his head, lips pressed firmly together. “No.  And I’ll bet you the _New York Times_ knows about it before we do when there is some.”

"Dean, dearie."

The door to his office opened, and Rowena poked her head in.  She took in the sleeping bag, Cas's rumpled hair, and Dean's incorrectly buttoned shirt and clearly drew her own conclusions.  If Dean had had any energy left, he probably would have tried to explain himself.  Instead, he watched her do the mental math and said nothing.

"They want you in the Situation Room."

Dean's heart had never dropped so quickly in his entire life.  There was absolutely no reason for a Secret Service agent--much less the Secret Service agent of a child--to be in the Situation Room unless Jack was--unless he was--

Cas lurched forward and grasped Dean's forearm so tightly that Dean wouldn't be surprised if it bruised tomorrow.

"Is it Jack?  Is he all right?  Is he--"

Rowena's poker face didn't crack, but it definitely slipped a little bit, betraying worry that she probably didn't want Dean to see.  Several years of working in close proximity made sure that she couldn't hide it completely. 

"I'm coming with you," Cas said, face completely white.

Dean shook his head.  Even in a completely disorganized White House, they wouldn't let Cas into the room.  He managed to pry Cas's fingers off of his arm and followed Rowena out of the room.  Her heels clicked sharply on the tile, echoing around the near-silent offices.  The veil hadn't lifted; the inauguration hadn't done its job.  Jack's disappearance had sucked all of the air out of the West Wing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the shortness! We're getting down to the wire and chapter breaks are harder to come by.
> 
> Thank you so much for all of the support :D


	9. The Situation Room

When they reached the Situation Room, Arthur Ketch was waiting for them.

In Dean’s defense, he tried to keep his dislike of the man off of his face.  He was a talented National Security Advisor, but in the few interactions Dean had had with him, he’d been incredibly condescending.

“Thank you, Ms. McLeod,” he said crisply.  Then, turning to Dean, “Agent Winchester.”

Things had to be bad for Rowena to pat his shoulder as she turned away.  Dean tried not to make his swallow so obvious as he followed Ketch into the room.  It looked pretty much like it did in the movies.  Were the darkened lights for the ambiance or for the projector?

Once he and Ketch got settled, they didn’t have much time before Roman walked through the door and everyone stood.  To Roman’s credit, he had least had the grace to look a little disconcerted at such a welcome.  It appeared that there were still things that took some time to get used to.

“Thank you.  Mr. Ketch, proceed.”

Dean’s heart settled somewhere around his naval.  He wasn’t sure he’d be able to listen to this.

“We received this video this morning.”

Ketch nodded to someone in the back, who clicked play.  Dean had to grip the side of the table until his knuckles turned white in order to avoid shouting out loud when Jack’s face came into view.

He didn’t look hurt, but it didn’t feel like much of an upside.  His eyes flickered nervously between the camera and what Dean assumed was the monster behind it.  He looked far younger on the screen than he had in years.

“Tell them.”

If Dean had been expecting some sort of Hollywood villain drawl, something that sounded chilling and evil, he was disappointed.  The man sounded like just that—a man.  Dean closed his eyes as Jack responded.

“I’m not hurt.”

Dean listened hard for some kind of catch in his voice, a noise that would alert him to some hidden hurt to prove the sentence a lie, but it seemed like he was telling the truth.

“Go on.”

“And I’m gonna stay that way.”

At that, Jack’s eyes filled with tears.  Despite himself, Dean’s did too out of sympathy and fear for the kid.

“For how long, Jack?”

Dean remembered that look in Jack’s eyes.  It was the one he’d worn while trying to memorize all the state capitols for a test two years ago.  The one when Dean quizzed him on his reading for English or the parts of the brain for science.  He’d clearly been coached.

He almost lost the little bit of breakfast he’d been able to force down.

“A week.”

For the first time, Jack’s lower lip wobbled.  Dean bit down so hard on his own that he tasted blood.

“I want an election.  A national election, Mr. Vice President.”

The sneer in his voice was evident even without being able to see his face.

“Give me that election.  You and I both know you don’t deserve the highest office in the land.  Give it to me, or Jack here faces the consequences.  And then, I think, the public might just call for an election themselves.”

The line went unsettlingly dead.  Beneath the table, Dean’s knee jumped up and down compulsively.  He didn’t bother to stop it.  There was no way Roman was going to call for an election—as far as Dean knew, there was no constitutional way to justify such an act—so if they didn’t find Jack in time—

Roman let out a laugh.  It sounded high and nervous to everyone in the room, even though they didn’t know him particularly well. “Has he never heard about presidential succession?”

Dean had to resist the urge to grab him by the tie and shake him.  Anyone who considered kidnapping the president’s kid to get what he wanted wasn’t exactly thinking about constitutional law.  Instead, he ground his teeth and tried not to betray the feeling on his face.

“It won’t be long before the press gets ahold of the tape,” Ketch said, choosing to ignore him.  Dean had never respected him more than in this moment. “We need to make what decisions we can quickly.  I’ll brief Ellen so that she can put together some statements.”

Dean tried to picture the look on the communications director’s face when Ketch sat her down and resolved to stay out of her way for the rest of the day.

“We can’t give in to his demands,” Roman said, shaking his head.

Dean couldn’t help himself anymore. “You’re going to let him hurt Jack?  You can’t fake compliance until we find him?”

The room at large glanced in his direction, surprised.  Apparently he’d just been supposed to sit and observe.  Well, that just wasn’t going to fly.  Dean refused to let them just hand Jack over to the whims of a psychopath.

“We have this administration to think about,” Ketch pointed out. “Revealing weakness this early demonstrates that we’ll bend to the wishes of—”

“Revealing weakness?” Dean nearly tripped over his own tongue. “He’s a child!  He’s the responsibility of this administration!”

Roman shook his head. “The nation is the responsibility of this administration.  Mr. Ketch is right.  I won’t be seen as weak.  Not with an election cycle around the corner.”

Dean surged to his feet, sending his chair toppling behind him. “Jack is a kid!  He’s just a kid, you can’t just sit around here and—”

“We’re not just sitting around,” Ketch said, slow, as if he were explaining it to a child. “We’re doing everything we can to return him to his uncle as soon as possible.”

A feeling of dread sank into Dean’s stomach, for a moment masking the blood surging through his veins at the thought of Jack at the mercy of an insane man and bureaucratic idiocy.

“Uncle,” Dean repeated dully. “ _Uncles._ Plural.”

Roman shook his head. “Michael Novak has always been a help to this White House.”

Dean stared. “To your gubernatorial campaigns, you mean.”

“Enough!” Ketch fixed him with a glare. “Agent Winchester, if you can’t get ahold of yourself—”

“—You’re the one talking about risking the life of a kid, don’t tell me to get ahold—”

“It’s time for you to leave,” Roman said, nodding towards the door.

Dean could have cried as he stormed out of the room.

* * *

There had been so many news breaks in the last hour or so that Sam’s head was spinning.  He flopped back on the cot in his office, a pencil gripped between his teeth, holding his notepad above his head.

Writing another piece about the video with Jack would be utterly pointless at this point, but no one wanted to read anything else.

“Sam.”

Eileen bustled into the room without an invitation, not that Sam would have denied her.  She sat down next to him, nudging his knee to make more room on the cot.  She had a look on her face that Sam had only seen a handful of times before.  He suspected her editor had seen it a fair few more times—she had a story.  And for whatever reason, he was the first to hear about it.

“Remember how you asked me to look into Michael Novak?”

Sam nodded.

“Well, I kept digging.  After this morning—”

She bit her lip.  Sam put a hand on her shoulder.  Watching the video had been impossible to avoid—every news station in the country was running it over and over again.  Sam suppressed a shudder of his own at the thought of the haunted, scared look on Jack’s face.

“—anyway.  I was just so stressed that I couldn’t focus on any more Jack stories.  So I s.”

She cracked open her laptop and tilted the screen so that Sam could read it.

“Phone records?”

Eileen nodded. “Michael Novak’s phone records, to be precise.  He’s been calling a payphone in Ward Seven several times a day for the last few days.  And then I got ahold of some financial records—don’t even ask, I had to call in like a million favors—and he’s made a massive transfer to some offshore account recently.”

Sam’s brow furrowed. “You don’t think he has a mistress?”

He knew the sign for _idiot_ all too well, so Eileen didn’t even have to finish sweeping her hand over her head for him to get the picture.

“He’s not married, Sam.”

“Right.  Then what is it?”

Eileen shrugged. “No clue.  But since no one’s actually getting any governing done around here, I think I have time to figure it out.”

 

* * *

Cas was on his way out of the White House to get a much needed cup of coffee and doughnut when he spotted the news van.  Usually, that would be more than enough incentive for him to dive into a nearby bush, but the familiar figure on the other end of the camera made his step stutter.

What the hell was Michael doing on television?

His brother had managed to present himself so that the White House perfectly framed his head as he spoke.  Cas was hardly the king of subtlety himself, but even he could parse out why a potential Senate candidate would want that kind of image.

“—of course I’m deeply troubled by the news.  And I personally will ensure Jack’s safe return if I have to.  But we can’t compromise our democracy for one child.”

Cas’s blood ran cold at the same time that his phone buzzed.  He glanced down.  Another _Washington Post_ update— **Jack Kline’s Kidnapper Releases Demands.** Suddenly, all he could see was red.

“I strongly encourage President Roman to—”

Had a single one of Cas’s brain cells been functioning, he probably would have second-guessed what he did next.  Instead, he reacted on instinct.

Ruby never saw him coming.

His left fist caught Michael around the head, snapping it to one side at the same time that his right went for his jaw.  Michael went down hard.  Apparently, having a fully functional gym in your penthouse (“Jack will enjoy the pool,” he’d said, a snide glance Cas’s way) didn’t do a lot for your fistfighting skills.

Cas landed on top of him, recovering fast enough to bracket his knees on either side of Michael’s chest and throw another punch at his face.  Michael’s nose crushed satisfyingly under his fist, never mind the tiny sparks of pain creeping along his knuckles.

“Castiel,” Michael wheezed out.

“He’s her son!” Cas shouted, grabbing Michael by his annoyingly not-grey hair. “Her _son_!”

He finally released Michael and sat back on his heels, chest heaving.

The cameras stared down at him.

Shit.

 

 


	10. The Metro

Dean nearly choked on his soda when he saw Castiel Novak come out of literally nowhere and linebacker tackle his brother.  The camera jostled for a moment, the operator clearly taken aback, but it refocused again, just in time for Cas to throw an elbow into Michael’s face.

At least one person was reacting to this situation like a normal human being.

The segment was still going when his buzzer rang.  Honestly, when was Sam going to learn to take the key that didn’t stick?  But when he opened the door, it wasn’t Sam standing on the other side.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean took a step back to let him in.

“Guess CNN didn’t air that live.”

He gestured at the TV, barely visible through the kitchen area.  Cas grimaced as he watched his past self pummel Michael into the ground.

“Not one of my finer moments.”

Even through his fear, Dean had to smile at that.

“Dude, are you kidding me?  That was the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

He wouldn’t have ever expected that from Cas, but then again, he was surprisingly beefy despite the whole mad scientist vibe.

“Charlie sent me,” he said apologetically, still lingering in the doorway. “She says we both need to ‘get our shit together.’”

Another smile, this time at the actual airquotes that Cas put around the phrase.  Dean fought it back down.  Now was not the time to catch feelings.

“Of course she did. Have you had breakfast yet?”

The remaining bedhead from sleeping in his office answered the question plainly enough, so Dean shoved Cas into the kitchen and set about making an omelet.  It felt surprisingly good to look after someone else right now.  He’d have to thank Sammy later for somehow managing to find the time to buy eggs.

“Wish I could have done it,” Dean said after a few minutes of silence.

He pointed back at the TV.  The tips of Castiel’s ears went pink.

“I shouldn’t have.  Now there’s no way anyone will see me as a suitable guardian for—as a suitable guardian.”

Both of them flinched at the absence of Jack in the sentence.  Dean finished whisking the eggs and got out the salt.

“If it’s anything, I don’t think they would’ve ever given you Jack.  Michael’s money, his connections—well.  He might be a douche, but he’s a rich douche and you know how that goes.”

Growing up in DC had been a daily reminder of exactly how that went.  The high school he and Sammy had gone to had barely had the funds to keep the lights on, much less finance the debate team they’d cut in Sam’s senior year.  Meanwhile, a crop of Congressmen’s kids had gone to a private school right down the road.”

Cas sighed. “None of it matters if they can’t find him.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah.”

Standing here in the kitchen with the president’s brother-in-law suddenly felt like the craziest thing in the world.  Here he was with Jack off God knows where with God knows what happening to him, playing house with a recluse botanist.  Dean found himself blinking back tears as he turned off the burner.  He composed himself by the time he turned back to Cas.

“Oh.  Shit.”

Cas bit down on one fist, eyes still welling with tears despite his best efforts to fight them back.  When he caught Dean looking at him, they finally fell.

Omelet forgotten, Dean dropped into the seat beside him.  He had a feeling that patting him on the shoulder and saying ‘there, there’ wouldn’t help matters, but he didn’t know what else to do.  He settled for taking Cas’s unoccupied hand in his.

“I’m sorry.” Cas grabbed a napkin from the center of the table and dabbed furiously at his face. “I never—not even for Kelly.”

Dean knew the feeling.  He hadn’t cried for Mom, not once.  But at Sam’s high school graduation, faced with the prospect of an empty apartment and an unknown future without someone to care for, he’d burst into tears.

“Got to get it out of your system, then.”

And before he had the chance to second guess himself, Dean pulled him out of the seat and into a hug.  Cas let out a surprised noise in the back of his throat, but he softened into the hug, muscles relaxing.

“Dean!”

Dean jerked back as if he’d been burned, straightening his shirt and preparing to apologize for being too forward.

But when he looked at Cas, his attention wasn’t on him at all.  It was on the television screen again.

On Jack.

* * *

Fear, Jack was beginning to learn, wasn’t like they always said it was in the movies.  It wasn’t a jolt of adrenaline giving him superpowers to knock out the man in the mask.  It didn’t give him the resolve to break his thumb so he could wiggle out of the bonds tying him to the chair.  It didn’t even give him the guts to spit in his captor’s face.

It felt more like icy chains weighing his limbs down, stopping him from even lifting a finger to defend himself.

The first time he’d felt it, Dean had rushed him into the West Wing, face white and bloodless.  There’d been a dozen panicked phone calls going on around him at once, voices raising in pitch as they all realized what was going on at once—what was going to happen.  He’d wound up sitting on a stool in Charlie Bradbury’s office with the woman holding his hand tight enough to leave a mark afterwards.

This was worse.

“Smile, Jack.”

Behind the mask, Jack was sure the man was fixing him with a grin of his own.  Jack bit down hard on his lip and tried not to cry.  That would probably end in a hurt worse than the way his wrists chafed.

“What do you want me to say?” Jack finally got the courage to ask.

The man usually gave him a script beforehand, something to focus on besides the jackhammer of his heart.

No answer.  Jack’s heart thudded louder in his chest as the little red recording light clicked on.

And suddenly, unexpectedly, he thought of Mom.  Always trying to keep him out of the limelight, struggling to fit a normal life in between galas with diplomats and gifts from foreign leaders.  She, Jack felt certain, wouldn’t have wanted him to be a pawn in this man’s strange game.

“Livestream, kiddo.  Say hello.”

With all of his strength, Jack lashed out with his foot.  The camera went flying and landed with a thud on the other side of the room as the man swore.

* * *

Both men surged towards the television in slow motion.  Far more used to the layout of his apartment, Dean got to the TV first, just in time to watch Jack kick the camera.  Behind him, Cas swore far more bitterly than he would have expected from him at the show of defiance.

But as proud as Dean was with Jack’s guts, his attention was on something else.

“Do you see this?”

He punched pause on the TV and leaned close.  The camera had landed, aimed at the baseboard of the small room. 

“See what?”

Cas knelt beside him, both of them so close that the screen was almost all pixels.

“The letters.”

Cas squinted. “DW.  SW.  MW.  Carved into the wood.  Probably kids, I don’t know—”

Dean momentarily forgot how to breathe.  Before he even realized what he was doing, he was plucking his key off of the hook near the door and barreling down the hall.  Cas followed barely a few steps behind, closing the door behind them.

“Dean, what—”

“He’s in an abandoned apartment building,” Dean said.

When the elevator refused to open a second after he punched the button, he wrenched open the door to the steps and raced down to street level.

“How could you possibly know that?”

Dean nearly threw a young woman out of their path as he ran full pelt down the street.  To Cas’s credit, he matched him step for step, breathing just a little ragged.

“Sam and I lived in an apartment in Ward Seven with Mom.  When she died, we had to move to save as much as we could.”

They finally hit the metro entrance.  Dean took the stairs two at a time and nearly snapped the turnstile in half as he barreled through it.  Cas, stuck without a frequent rider card, vaulted over one.  No one bothered them as they hustled into the busy station.

“Before we moved out, Sam carved that into the baseboard.  Not some kid.  _Sam_.”

The next train headed towards the McPherson Square station was about to pull out.  Dean grabbed Cas by his tie and yanked him into the car right before the doors closed on him.

“You know where he is,” Cas breathed.

Whether it was excitement at the prospect or simply the exertion of literally sprinting down here, Dean didn’t know.  He didn’t bother to check the grin on his face.

“We’re gonna get him back.”

Considering how much shit the universe had thrown his way these last few days, Dean figured that he deserved a stroke of luck like this.

When Cas grabbed his hand as they sprinted out of the train the moment it stopped, he took it as part of the luck.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrestled with myself about the statistical likelihood of it being that apartment, but then I remembered that I do this for fun.
> 
> So suspend your disbelief with me please :P
> 
> And thank you again for all the lovely support!


	11. Ward Seven

Arthur Ketch very much wanted to keep his job once President Roman settled more firmly into office and started bringing in his own people.  Unfortunately, given the current problem, that wasn’t looking very likely.

Typical.  He was sure that no kid had ever run away under Henry Kissinger’s nose.

“Sir, there’s someone here to see you.  A Dean Winchester?”

Ketch sighed.  Winchester had a lot of nerve, coming around here again while the adults were trying to work.

“Five minutes—no, three.”

He had to present a solution to Roman, and fast if he wanted to keep this office.  He didn’t have time for this.

“I know where Jack is.”

Ketch took in the sight in front of him.  Dean Winchester, wearing an almost threadbare ACDC t-shirt, his sweaty hair plastered to his forehead, and the former First Lady’s strangest brother, red-faced and sweating in a shirt and tie.

To his credit, he didn’t laugh, but it was a close thing.

“The best intelligence agencies in the world don’t know where Jack is.”

Winchester launched into an absolutely insane story—his mother, an apartment, his brother (wasn’t he that _Washington Post_ nuisance?), and a carving in the wall.

“I saw it,” Novak put in, using his tie to wipe some of the sweat off of his brow. “He’s right about the letters.  It was just a flash, but it was in the video.”

Ketch rolled his eyes. “So no other child has ever carved letters into a wall in this city?”

Winchester’s face reddened, and it wasn’t just from the run here. “If you would just listen to me—”

“I’ve listened enough.  Get out.”

* * *

It took Sam about a half hour more to see the video and to recognize his own handiwork on the video with Jack.  Leaving an utterly confused Eileen behind, he sprinted out of the briefing room and down the hall, just in time to literally run into Dean and Castiel Novak on the way out of Ketch’s office.

“Dean, Jack is—”

“I know!  I tried to tell Ketch and he wouldn’t listen.”

 “We don’t need him,” Sam said. “I can get something out in the next ten minutes once I talk to my editor.  The public backlash about leaving no stone left unturned will force his hand.”

He recognized the dangerous look in Dean’s eyes a moment too late.  It was the kind of unshackled determination that had dragged him through his GED and a community college degree while struggling to put food on the table for the two of them.  And while Sam had certainly been thankful for that determination decades ago, now was not the time.

“That’ll take what, a day at least?  This guy is crazy, Sammy.  Jack probably made him real angry with that last stunt, and we have no idea what he’s doing to the kid right now.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m coming.”

Sam dropped his head into his hands.  He was going to get a migraine.

“So it’s one secret service agent and a guy who’s never thrown a punch in his life going to rescue Jack from a psychopath?”

Cas fixed him with a surprisingly icy stare. “You saw me beat Michael up this morning.  I know you did.”

Okay, he had.  He’d endured seeing Ruby’s face and everything.  But to think that one fistfight with a freaking fifty-something lawyer prepared you for something like this—

“Post the story,” Dean said. “I’m your anonymous source.  And if we don’t call in an hour, post a second one that says we went after him and didn’t make it.”

Sam would have liked to argue that last point, but Dean’s face was set in a resolute frown that he knew better than to argue with.

“I don’t like it.”

“He’s family, Sammy.  We don’t leave family behind.”

Sam closed his eyes.  Reopened them.  Focused.

“If you die out there, I’m gonna kill you.”

Dean’s hand came up on automatic and ruffled Sam’s hair like he did when they were kids.  Sam didn’t bother batting it away.

As soon as he and Cas were out of sight, he pulled his laptop out of his bag and balanced it on the crook of his arm.  He had work to do.

* * *

With one gun between them and no idea what was waiting for them once they reached the apartment building, Cas didn’t like their odds.  Still, the idea of leaving Dean to his mission alone was unthinkable, so here he was.

On the metro again.

There was a special sort of absurd that came with traveling via public transportation on a rescue mission, but Cas had never rented a car upon his arrival and Dean apparently didn’t own one. (“Mom gave me Dad’s old Impala when I turned sixteen, but we needed rent money after she died, so—yeah.”)

“Do most agents care about the people they protect this much?”

Apparently, his normal contentment to sit in silence had gone out the window along with his remaining shreds of sanity.

Dean shrugged. “Spend enough time around someone, and so long as they treat you like a human being you’re bound to like them, I guess.  But yeah, things with Jack aren’t typical.”

He glanced down at his hands.  Cas knew it probably wasn’t the smartest move to press, but something about the intensity of his stare must have prompted Dean to continue.

“Jack’s dad was a good man.  But he wasn’t a good dad.  Jack needed someone to look after him, so I stepped up.  Probably more than I should’ve.”

Cas looked at him very seriously. “I’m glad you did.” Then, “I want to be that for Jack.  I can’t be a substitute for his parents, but I want to step up.”

The train ground to a halt.  More used to the process than he would have ever thought, Cas didn’t move, but Dean got to his feet so he jumped up and followed.  They wound down the streets; Dean seemed to know where they were going, so it fell to Cas to trust him.

Cas got stressed out at the idea of leaving the house unexpectedly.  Cancelling plans relaxed him like nothing else did.  Meg had once estimated that it took him fifteen minutes to work up the courage to speak in social situations.  But here he was, trying to get the drop on a kidnapper, and he didn’t feel nervous at all.  Maybe that wasn’t a good thing, because even Dean looked a little rattled as they neared the apartment building.

“Stay behind me,” he ordered, a hand sneaking back to the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. “I’m not letting you get shot.”

Cas didn’t bother pointing out that there was very little that Dean could do to prevent that.  Instead, he stuck close to Dean’s side as he picked the lock. 

Later, he’d have to ask why, exactly, Dean knew how to do that.

“What’s your plan?”

Dean glanced back at him as he turned the door handle. “Surprise.”

Cas wasn’t sure if that meant that he planned to surprise the man, or if the plan itself was a surprise, but it didn’t really matter one way or another. 

“Dean.”

Dean glanced back at him, readjusting his grip on his gun. “What?”

Before Cas could talk himself out of it, he took a half step forward, bringing them nose to nose.  Dean wasn’t as tall as he seemed after all; he maybe had a hair or two on Cas, but not much more than that.

“Good luck.”

He leaned forward, and Dean met him halfway.  It was over in less than the time it took for Cas to realize he was actually _kissing someone_ for the first time in literal years.

“Yeah,” Dean said gruffly, straightening up. “You too.”

He took a moment to steady his breathing before following Dean into the building.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys make my day with all of the support :D


	12. The Apartment

It looked about as rundown as he would have expected a place like it to be.  Dean took the steps three at a time, landing quiet as a cat on each one.  Cas’s dress shoes pinched his toes as he tried to follow suit.

The reality of the absolute insanity they were in the middle of began to sink it.  Cas fought it off the best he could, but a sense of dread began to sink into his body.  Something wasn’t right about this.

Surely a man who kidnapped the president’s son would have some sort of security measure.

Cas clenched his hands into fists.  The bruises beginning to bloom on his knuckles protested the movement.  Clearly, something about the way he’d punched his brother had been in poor form.

He suddenly wished he’d taken Meg up on that offer for karate lessons.

Dean flicked the safety off on his handgun as the two men emerged on to a landing that looked, to Castiel, completely identical to all of the others they’d passed so far.  The grimy window only let in a fraction of the sunlight from outside, and the dull grey curtain fluttered halfheartedly in the breeze squeezing through the sides of the window.

Cas swallowed.  Dean swiveled to face him.

“You can wait outside.  Run if there’s trouble.”

He could only shake his head.  Jack was trapped in this situation because he’d been too afraid to demand what was best for the child he wanted to care for.  If Jack could hold himself together, so could he.

Dean reached back with his free hand and gave Cas’s a tentative squeeze.  Then, he kicked in the door.

If Castiel had passed the man on the street, he probably wouldn’t have done a double take.  If he’d been expecting something evil, something villainous, he was disappointed.  He looked completely normal, down to the squarish glasses perched on his nose and the poorly-combed over hair.

Of course, the gun probably would have made him look twice.

“Secret Service!  Freeze!”

The man shrugged. “I think you should probably be freezing.  Unless you want my trigger finger twitching accidentally.”

With difficulty, Cas tore his gaze away from the muzzle of the gun, directed at Jack’s head.  The kid’s eyes watered.  A strip of duct tape over his mouth muffled everything but a small whimper.

“You kill him, you lose your leverage.”

Dean’s grip on his gun didn’t waver, but his voice did.

“Guess you’ve got me there.” The gun’s muzzle drifted until it was aimed at Jack’s thigh. “It’ll still hurt like a bitch, though.”

Jack’s eyes squeezed shut.  A tear trickled down his cheek.  Cas made an aborted movement forward, only to run into Dean’s other arm thrown out like an iron bar.

“We’ve got surgeons,” Dean continued, undeterred. “And the hole in your head will be much harder to sew up.”

The kidnapper shrugged. “Fine, then.”

The muzzle swung until it was directed between Cas’s eyes.  His entire body flooded with ice.

“Guy’s not Secret Service.  Bet he doesn’t even know how to shoot a gun.  Drop it, and I don’t put a bullet in his head.”

A pause.  Cas calculated, silently.  Dean could shoot the kidnapper and get Jack back in one fell swoop.  Sure, Michael would get him, but it was a hell of a lot better than a gunshot wound in the thigh.

Well.  Not _much_ better—Cas and Michael had been raised alongside each other and Cas would much rather endure a bullet wound than repeat the experience, but it wasn’t like Dean knew that.

“Fine.”

Dean’s gun clattered to the ground.  Cas chanced a glance at his watch.  Ten minutes until Sam posted his story.  Probably another ten after that until the authorities followed up.  They couldn’t stall for that long.

“See those cuffs?” The kidnapper gestured with his gun at a set sitting on what had once been the Winchesters’ kitchen counter. “Behind your back, through the slats in that radiator.  Think you can manage it?”

Dean made his way over to the radiator slowly.  He met Cas’s eyes and looked down, once. The kidnapper tracked him with his eyes, and his gun.

Cas glanced down.  Dean’s gun was only inches away from his foot. 

He’d gone to a BB gun range as a kid once.  So what if he’d cried when the kickback had surprised him?  He could do this.  Cas dropped to his knee, aimed the gun at the guy’s chest, and fired.

“ARGH!”

Cas only realized his eyes were squeezed shut when a hand clapped down on his shoulder.  He pried them open to find Dean kneeling beside him, mercifully unharmed.

“Did I get him?”

“In the knee, yeah.  God, where were you _aiming_?”

Cas followed Dean’s gaze to the kidnapper, who lay on the ground, panting with his eyes screwed shut.  Cas’s heart lurched when he remembered the gun, but Dean smiled and waved it at him.

“Get Jack.  I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Dean flipped open his phone and tapped in a number, presumably the police.  Cas made his way over to Jack, careful to keep his motions slow and deliberate.  He didn’t know what would set his nephew off right now.  He knelt in front of the chair and reached up to peel the tape off.  Jack let out another whimper when the material ripped some of the tender skin around his mouth despite Cas’s attempts to be gentle.

“Shh, shh.”

When the tape finally dropped, Jack’s head sagged forward, as if a heavy weight had finally been lifted.  Cas smoothed some of his hair back from his forehead.

“It’s all right.  Just breathe with me.”

Kelly had told him the same once when she’d found him sitting in his room with the walls closing in and his chest too compressed to breathe.  She’d forced him to sit on the edge of the bed and held his hand to the rise and fall of her chest until he’d calmed.

Jack sucked in a few halfhearted breaths, his eyes darting around the room as if there was still a threat in the corners.  When Cas finally managed to get the bonds around his wrists to loosen enough for him to slip free, he collapsed forward into his arms.

“It’s okay, Jack.  I swear.”

“Get him to the stairwell,” Dean ordered.

Cas was all too happy to comply.

* * *

“You’re lucky,” Dean said quietly, looking down at the man laying in front of him. “If Jack weren’t here, I would have killed you.  Cried self defense.  They would have backed me up, too.”

A low noise made its way through the man’s lips, but Dean thought it probably had more to do with the bullet hole through his kneecap than the threat.

“Still.  There’s nothing stopping me from taking out the other knee.”

The man squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’m gonna ask a question, and you’re gonna answer me, and we’ll figure out if you get to keep that knee.  Who are you working for?”

It only took his finger on the safety for Dean to get his answer.

* * *

For the first time in a week, Charlie Bradbury didn’t feel like she was going to throw up as she approached the podium.

The steady buzz in the briefing room didn’t die down.  The only reporters without their hands in the air and questions pouring out were Sam Winchester and Eileen Leahy.  As normal, their heads were close together as Eileen signed something quick and light and Sam replied, slow and steady. 

At least this time they had an excuse.

“I have a statement to make before we get to questions,” she said over the chatter. “At ten thirty-four this morning, a call was placed to the DC police by Secret Service agent Dean Winchester.  He, along with Castiel Novak, President Kline’s brother-in-law, launched a rescue attempt to recover Jack Kline.  We are happy to report that they were successful.”

The room stirred restlessly as she cleared her throat, clearly not quite done with the statement.  The next part was almost certainly going to keep her at this podium for the next six months.

“Interrogation of the kidnapper determined that the motivations put forth in his statement were not comprehensive.  He received substantial financial compensation for the kidnapping from Michael Novak.”

For the second time in a week, the briefing went dead silent.  The spell only lasted a few blessed seconds that gave Charlie a moment to recover her breath.

“I’ll be taking your questions now.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully that last revelation explains why there was only one kidnapper--Michael didn't want to involve a bunch of people because that leaves more room for slip-ups.
> 
> Again, thank you for reading and commenting. We're almost there!


	13. Home

Dean was just wiping his soapy hands off on a dishtowel when the doorbell rang.  His brow furrowed.  Benny had been by just this morning, Bobby had fittings scheduled all day, and Sam and Eileen weren’t due over for dinner for another hour or so.  That just about covered his friend list, so who could possibly want to talk to him?

“Dean.”

He stepped back from the door to let Castiel in.  The last two weeks had clearly been kinder to him than the one before.  He had only one shaving nick on his jaw instead of four, and his tie was even straight.  Not to mention the fact that it was a new tie.

“What are you doing here?” He paused, backtracked. “Hi.  I mean, hi.”

Cas shuffled inside, looking incredibly uncomfortable.  He tugged at his collar as if it were choking him.  And given the amount of sweat gathering on his neck, it wouldn’t surprise Dean to learn that it was.

“I have to ask you something.”

Dean just stared at him. “Okay?  Shoot.”

“I want you,” he blurted out.

All of Dean’s remaining brain cells—and after the month he’d had, there weren’t a whole lot of them to go around—ground to a halt.

“Um.  What?”

Cas reddened. “No.  Not like that.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I mean—it would be—I—”

Dean raised his eyebrows. “If this is a come on, it’s the weirdest one I’ve ever heard.”

And Ruby had once flirted with him.  _After_ dating his brother.

“I want you to come back to New York.  With us.”

He understood all of those words individually, but they didn’t make a single lick of sense in a line like that. 

“In case you didn’t notice, Cas, I’m not Secret Service anymore.  They take insubordination pretty seriously, even if it works out.”

He hadn’t been surprised about the firing, but that hadn’t made watching Crowley’s smarmy smirk in the background any easier to deal with.

“Not as security.” Cas’s face flushed. “Jack loves you.  He’s going to need all the help he can get.”

Dean’s heart clenched.  The separation from Jack had been the hardest part of the last few weeks.  But he needed security clearance he didn’t have anymore to even get close to the kid.

“Besides.  I wouldn’t mind having you around.”

Dean couldn’t help a smile at that. “So what you’re saying is that you _do_ want me.”

The cherry red tomato that had once been Castiel Novak’s head answered the question for him.

* * *

“ _According to interviews with Novak, his intentions were never to hurt his nephew but to orchestrate a rescue himself, rendering himself the best candidate to adopt him_.”

Sam shook his head as he read aloud, striding side to side across his office.  Eileen sat cross-legged on the cot, all misgivings about the implications apparently finally forgotten.

“That’s your last investigative report before New York?  Bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”

Eileen whacked him on the leg with a rolled-up copy of the _Times_. “You try writing hard-hitting journalism when the criminals sound like Scooby Doo villains.  Or reality TV show stars.”

Sam flopped down on the cot beside her.  It made a pathetic wheezing noise—probably not long for this world, then.  Probably for the best.

“Dean’s moving upstate.”

He signed the words, too, making his best guess at what the last word would look like.  It must have been at least passable, because Eileen didn’t even laugh at him for it.

“Virginia?”

“New York.  He’s sticking with Jack.”

And, Sam suspected, Castiel Novak, but he wasn’t going to rat out his brother about that just yet.  There would be plenty of time to speculate.

“Oh.  He’ll have to come by my apartment sometime, then.”

Sam had practiced this next bit in ASL, but his fingers still stumbled a little.

“With him gone, I need a new roommate.”

Eileen smiled, tight. “Sam.  I really like you, I do, but—”

“In New York.  Know somebody who’s looking?”

The kiss that cut him off before he even finished the sentence answered that question for him.

* * *

“You got your math homework?”

Jack let out a groan and thundered back up the steps.  Dean watched him go, shaking his head.  At least that was something he’d never had to remind Sammy about.  Half the time, it had been him on Dean’s case about some project he’d been procrastinating on.

“Math homework again?”

He turned to find Cas leaning against the doorway, a cup of coffee in his hand.  Dean took it with a smile.

“Yeah.  I swear, I need to start gluing it to his hand.”

Jack rattled down the steps again. “I’m gonna be late.”

He flung an arm around first Cas’s shoulders and then Dean’s.  Then, with a grin tossed over his shoulder, he sprinted toward the bus.  It had been something he’d insisted on, even if Benny had to sit shotgun with the good natured driver.

The last six months had been a bit of a roller coaster.  The move out to New York had done wonders for Jack; big crowds made him jumpy, and DC was littered with memories of his parents.  But he still didn’t handle unexpected situations well, and sometimes the nightmares were so potent that he slept on the couch sandwiched between them.  Still, it was better than Dean could have ever hoped.

“I’m proud of him," Cas said after a moment.

Dean looped an arm around his waist and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Yeah, me too.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it!
> 
> Thank you all so, so much for reading and commenting and leaving kudos and everything else. I know I say it every week, but your comments make me so, so happy. And knowing that I've helped improve your day has improved mine!
> 
> As for what's next, I'll be writing codas for s14 when it begins airing next month. Until then, tide yourself over with some more fun Destiel (well. and angsty destiel) from my other coda series.


End file.
